You might also be interested in this online poll that's been running for a while "Who's your favourite Stoic?" Over 400 responses so far and you can vote or view the results, which are kind of interesting in their own right:
On the same site as this article you can also complete a "Stoic Attitudes Scale" that we've been developing in collaboration with a team of psychologists and academics linked to the research on Stoicism at Exeter University:
About 100 people have done it so far but at this stage we're just collecting feedback on the concepts included for incorporation into a revised design. The feedback has been that people have found it really interesting and useful, though. Feel free to check it out, you can still complete it online.
Hmm... Might be good advice. That's just the format or structure used to explain the exercise minus any content, though: a beginning, middle, and end. The actual content in my article is the practice of a form of mindfulness based on the central precept of Stoicism. In other words, you've missed out the "Stoic" part.
No, it's not advice. It's an item from a bullet-point list of contemplative exercises found in traditional Stoicism and other Socratic philosophies. The meditation on death (melete thanatou) was mentioned by Socrates as an integral part of his approach to philosophy, according to Plato and it's common to many other philosophical and spiritual traditions, even Eastern approaches such as Buddhism. You'd need to read the literature to understand the concept of the exercise, although that doesn't necessarily mean you'd agree with it you won't get a reasonable idea of what it's about just from that one sentence description, and that's not what it's meant for anyway. Still not everyone's cup of tea, though.
I'm the author of the article. Someone else kindly posted it here. I just noticed an awful lot of traffic suddenly coming from this link. So thought I'd say thanks! Also, if anyone has any questions please let me know. Happy to help. The article is just based on some research I'm doing for a book called Teach yourself Stoicism, incidentally. You may also be interested in the research on Stoicism that's been going on at the University of Exeter, with which I've been helping a bit. This is their blog:
http://poll.fm/3zsyo
Regards,
Donald Robertson