He stands 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighs 195 pounds, and turns 60 in November. He’s also a baseball coach who’s a pretty serious weightlifter and on course to do a 400-pound deadlift just before his birthday.

That’s what you need to know about my brother to move this story along.

Ever since the COVID-19 crisis, we meet once a weekend for what we jokingly call — though there is an element of truth to it — our three-hour therapy session. And inevitably for a bit of each, we’ll talk about our workouts and our health.

Even though he really is doing quite well on his own on both counts, he will occasionally ask for advice. Not long ago after we discussed the number of healthy changes he had made to his diet since a kick-in-the-teeth divorce, he had a question for me.

He wanted to know if there was any additional single thing he could do that would not only improve his diet but also his overall health.

I knew exactly how to answer, but paused to make him think it was a complicated and lengthy one. I then said, “Get tougher,” and watched the surprise — no, the disbelief — register in his eyes.

After all, he had just finished telling me he had thrown about 250 batting-practice pitches, hit about an equal number of ground and fly balls, raked the infield dirt afterward — and then did a one-hour lift for his back and biceps before attending this weekend’s therapy session.

But the get-tougher mentality I‘m talking about transcends exercise. It’s more closely aligned to what William B. Irvine calls voluntary hardship in his book, A Guide to the Good Life.

In short, Irvine argues that you and I and my brother should do as the first Stoics did thousands of years ago: “welcome” and even “inflict” minor discomforts upon ourselves as a way to get more enjoyment out of life.

If that line of thinking strikes you as dubious, consider this. There’s no better feeling in the world (despite what those FanDuel Casino commercials claim about winning) than the sense of accomplishment, yet you can never feel it unless you first overcome some type of difficulty.

Moreover, consider the three benefits to creating voluntarily discomfort Irvine mentions in his book. One is immediate, a boost in self-confidence.

That’s a fairly obvious one, so not much more needs to be said about it The two others, however, require a bit more explanation — and some editorialization.

For it seems to me we all have so much to be thankful for, yet we all experience periods of time when happiness eludes us. The reason why (with a proper acknowledgment to Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun”) is that happiness is not a matter of having what you want but wanting what you have.

By creating a voluntary hardship and temporarily denying yourself something you already have, you will better appreciate that thing when you allow yourself to have it again.

Another benefit to voluntary hardship according to Irvine is that it serves as a vaccine — or at least a partial one. While it will not fully inoculate you against future misfortune, it will take some of the sting out of it.

Can you imagine, for instance, someone who’s already hiked the entire Appalachian Trail getting too distraught over losing electricity in the house for a few days? Or someone who observes Ramadan becoming overwrought over missing a meal?

In any case, you’re probably well aware that I’ve once again relied on Stoic philosophy in order to elucidate a worthwhile point. So much of Stoicism’s simple and spot-on, though, that I don’t regret going to that well again.

What would fill me with regret, however — and probably frustrate the devil out of you — is if the article ended and never offered possible ways for you to do what I suggested to my brother: to get tougher on yourself.

Since spring is in the air, and you’ve probably begun some type of lawn care, let’s start there.

Own a self-propelled push lawn mower? How about — at least for part of each cut and provided you’re healthy enough — disengaging the self-propulsion?

Hate getting down on your hands and knees to pull weeds, so you spray them with weed killer instead? Why not keep spraying the weeds around the house and sidewalks, but pull the ones in your garden?

Speaking of gardens, what’s the reason to have one? To derive pleasure from it.

And wouldn’t you just know it? What the well-known Stoic Seneca says about pleasure is a fine way to end.

That too often seeking it is like pursuing and then capturing a wild beast. And if you’re not fully mindful when you then tend to it in its cage, pleasure will turn on you and tear you to pieces.