Zeno of Citium, the man who founded Stoicism, didn't arrive in Athens planning to start a school. According to Diogenes Laertius, he was shipwrecked on a voyage from Phoenicia "with a cargo of purple." He made his way into the city, sat down in a bookshop and started reading about Socrates. When he asked where men like that could be found, the bookseller pointed to a philosopher who happened to be walking past and said, "Follow yonder man" (Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.2-3, R. D. Hicks's translation).

It's easy to picture the Stoics as calm, unbothered people who never gave a thought to what anyone else thought of them. The stories about their lives suggest something more human. Many of them cared a great deal, and they got over it the way most of us do: slowly, and usually after something went wrong. Here are eight lessons they learned along the way.

1. Embarrassment shrinks when you stop hiding it

The philosopher Zeno followed that day was Crates, a Cynic, and the Cynics were famous for not caring about appearances. Zeno had a problem there. Diogenes says he had "too much native modesty to assimilate Cynic shamelessness."

So Crates gave him "a potful of lentil-soup to carry through the Ceramicus," a busy district of Athens. When Crates saw that Zeno was embarrassed and "tried to keep it out of sight," he broke the pot with his staff. As Zeno ran off with soup running down his legs, Crates called after him: "Why run away, my little Phoenician?" Then he added, "nothing terrible has befallen you" (Lives 7.3).

It's a rough way to teach someone, and I wouldn't recommend it. But the point holds up. A lot of the sting in embarrassment comes from trying to hide it.

The next time you trip on a step or mangle someone's name in a meeting, try just naming it: "Well, that was graceful." People tend to take their cue from you. If you don't treat it as a disaster, they usually won't either.

2. Answer the doubt with facts, then get back to work

Cleanthes, who later took over Zeno's school, arrived in Athens with almost nothing. He was a former boxer who studied by day and drew water in gardens at night to pay his way. Not everyone believed a man that strong could be living so humbly on honest work.

Diogenes Laertius says Cleanthes "is said to have been brought into court to answer the inquiry how so sturdy a fellow as he made his living." He didn't make a speech about his character. He brought witnesses: "the gardener in whose garden he drew water and the woman who sold the meal which he used to crush." The court was satisfied and even "voted him a donation of ten minas, which Zeno forbade him to accept" (Lives 7.168-169).

Diogenes doesn't say why Zeno refused the money. But Cleanthes's part of the story is clear enough. He answered the suspicion with plain facts, not wounded pride, and then went back to drawing water.

If a colleague hints that you've been coasting, a short list of what you actually did this week usually settles it faster than an indignant reply.

3. Someone else's verdict doesn't have to become yours

Publius Rutilius Rufus was a Roman statesman who had studied under the Stoic Panaetius. In 92 BC he was convicted of extortion in the province of Asia, where he had served. Many ancient writers thought the charge was false, brought by the tax collectors he had reined in there. He went into exile and lived out his life in Smyrna, in the very province he was supposed to have plundered.

Seneca later wrote that "sentence of conviction was borne by Rutilius as if the injustice of the decision were the only thing which annoyed him." When the dictator Sulla offered to bring him home, Rutilius refused, "and nobody in those days said 'No' to Sulla!" (Moral Letters 24.4, Richard Mott Gummere's translation).

What bothered Rutilius was that the court got it wrong, not what people would now think of him. That's a useful distinction. It's fair to be annoyed when someone gets you wrong. It's another thing to let their version replace your own.

If you get an unfair review at work, say once, clearly and in writing, where you think it's mistaken. Then let the next few months of work make the rest of the case.

4. Losing in public is survivable, but it has a cost

In 52 BC, Cato the Younger ran for consul, Rome's highest elected office. According to Plutarch, he refused to court voters with "the customary salutations" and wouldn't let his friends do it for him either. "He therefore failed to obtain the office."

Losing usually meant "dejection and sorrow tinged with considerable shame for many days." Cato "bore so easily what had happened that he anointed himself and practised ball in the Campus Martius." After lunch he went down to the forum as usual "and walked about there with his intimates" (Cato the Younger 49-50, Bernadotte Perrin's translation).

The story has a second half, though. Plutarch says Cicero criticized Cato because, "when affairs demanded a man like him for office, he would not exert himself nor try to win the people by kindly intercourse with them."

Cicero had a point. Cato's calm after losing is admirable. His refusal to make his case to voters is what cost him the chance to do the job. If you miss out on a promotion, showing up the next day without sulking says a lot. It's also worth asking whether you ever made a clear case for yourself in the first place.

5. Being called a hypocrite isn't a reason to give up

Seneca wrote about simple living while being one of the richest men in Rome, and people noticed. In On the Happy Life, he quotes the kind of thing his critics said: "Why, then, do you talk so much more bravely than you live?" and "why is your estate more elaborately kept than its natural use requires?"

His answer didn't deny the gap. "I am not a wise man, and I will not be one in order to feed your spite: so do not require me to be on a level with the best of men, but merely to be better than the worst: I am satisfied, if every day I take away something from my vices and correct my faults" (On the Happy Life 17, Aubrey Stewart's translation).

To be fair to the critics, they weren't entirely wrong. Much of Seneca's fortune came through his closeness to the emperor Nero. But his reply still works. The gap between what you believe and how you live is a reason to keep working on it, not to stop believing it.

If you've started walking every morning and someone points out you skipped twice this week, "Yes, and I went five times" is a perfectly good answer.

6. Being right doesn't mean it's the right moment

Musonius Rufus, the Stoic who later taught Epictetus, learned this one in front of an army. In AD 69, during a year of civil war, troops were closing in on Rome, and envoys went out to meet them. Musonius went along.

The historian Tacitus describes what happened: "Making his way among the companies, he began to warn those in arms, discoursing on the blessings of peace and the dangers of war. Many were moved to ridicule by his words, more were bored; and there were some ready to jostle him about and to trample on him, if he had not listened to the warnings of the quieter soldiers and the threats of others and give up his untimely moralizing" (Histories 3.81, Clifford H. Moore's translation).

Musonius wasn't wrong about peace, and he clearly wasn't worried about being laughed at. But Tacitus's word "untimely" is the lesson. Not caring about mockery is one thing. Not noticing whether anyone is able to hear you is another.

The middle of a heated family argument is rarely the time for a speech about how everyone should communicate better. The same point often lands well over breakfast the next day.

7. Trying to look impressive is the expensive option

Epictetus was born into slavery and spent much of his life poor, so he knew what it was like to be looked down on. In one of his talks, he takes up the complaint of a man who is "grieved" at being pitied. As the man puts it, "they pity me for my poverty, for not possessing honorable offices."

He saw two ways out. One was to convince everyone that poverty isn't a misfortune, which he called "the very thing which Zeus has not been able to do." The other was to put on a show, which meant you would need "to have splendid garments, and all other things for display, and to show that you are a man honored by the great." That second path, he said, belongs to "a man who is boastful, silly, and good for nothing."

His alternative was simpler: "This only is given to you, to convince yourself" (Discourses 4.6, George Long's translation).

A modern version might be the bigger car, the holiday you can't quite afford or the renovation you're doing mainly so the neighbors notice. It's worth asking who those things are for. If the answer is mostly "other people," it's an expensive way to buy an opinion you can't control anyway.

8. Even generosity won't silence every critic

Marcus Aurelius was generous by any measure. When he returned to Rome after years at war, according to the historian Cassius Dio, the crowd called out "eight," meaning eight gold pieces each. He gave them 800 sesterces apiece, "a larger amount than they had ever received before." He also canceled debts owed to the treasury going back 45 years and had the records burned in the Forum.

And yet Dio, writing a few decades after Marcus died, added: "I am surprised to hear people even to-day censuring him on the ground that he was not an open-handed prince" (Roman History 72.32, Earnest Cary's translation).

Marcus seems to have expected something like this. In his private notes, he reminded himself of "the emptiness of applause, and the changeableness and want of judgement in those who pretend to give praise" (Meditations 4.3, George Long's translation).

If you host the family Christmas every year and someone still says, "It'd be nice to do something different for once," you can take the suggestion seriously without treating it as a verdict on all your effort.

Not caring isn't the same as not listening

None of these Stoics stopped caring about other people. Cleanthes still answered the court. Seneca still heard his critics, even if he didn't enjoy it. Cato's story shows what can happen when you stop listening altogether.

What they learned to drop was the need for approval, not the willingness to hear a fair point. A useful test is to ask: "Is this criticism telling me something true, or just telling me someone disapproves?" The first is worth acting on. The second is mostly theirs to carry.

One place to start

Think of one thing you've been avoiding because of how it might look, such as asking a question in a meeting, wearing the comfortable shoes or admitting you've changed your mind.

Do it once this week. Then notice how much of the discomfort was in the doing, and how much was in the worrying beforehand.