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Marcus says to approach each task as if it were your last, because it very well could be.
Find clarity in the simplicity of doing your job today.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO STAY ON TOP OF EVERYTHING
“If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters—don’t wish to seem knowledgeable. And if some regard you as important, distrust yourself.”
One of the most powerful things you can do as a human being in our hyperconnected, 24/7 media world is say: “I don’t know.” Or, more provocatively: “I don’t care.” Most of society seems to have taken it as a commandment that one must know about every single current event, watch
every episode of every critically acclaimed television series, follow the news religiously, and present themselves to others as an informed and worldly individual.
But where is the evidence that this is actu...
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How much more time, energy, and pure brainpower would you have available if you drastically cut your media consumption? How much more rested and present would you feel if you were no longer excited and outraged by every scandal, breaking story, and potential crisis (many of which never come to pass anyway)?
PHILOSOPHY AS MEDICINE OF THE SOUL
“Don’t return to philosophy as a task-master, but as patients seek out relief in a treatment of sore eyes, or a dressing for a burn, or from an ointment. Regarding it this way, you’ll obey reason without putting it on display and rest easy in its care.”
The busier we get, the more we work and learn and read, the further we may drift.
Eventually this neglect will contribute to a problem—the stress builds up, our mind gets cloudy, we forget what’s important—and result in an injury of some kind.
Stoicism is designed to be medicine for the soul.
PASSIONS AND EMOTIONS
FOR THE HOT-HEADED MAN
manlier. A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance—unlike the angry and complaining.
Why do athletes talk trash to each other?
angering opponents is an easy way to knock them off their game.
Try to remember that when you find yourself getting mad. Anger is not impressive or tough—it’s a mistake. It’s weakness.
Fans and opponents called boxer Joe Louis the “Ring Robot”
they are in control of their passions—rather than controlled by their passions.
A PROPER FRAME OF MIND
“Frame your thoughts like this—you are an old person, you won’t let yourself be enslaved by this any longer, no longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse, and you’ll stop complaining about your present fortune or dreading the future.”
if someone says something we disagree with, something inside us tells us we have to argue with them. If there’s a plate of cookies in front of us, we have to eat them. If someone does something we dislike, we have to get mad about it. When something bad happens, we have to be sad,
We would never let another person jerk us around the way we let our impulses do. It’s time we start seeing it that way—that
THE SOURCE OF YOUR ANXIETY
“When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn’t wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?”
says, it’s wanting something outside our control.
Today, when you find yourself getting anxious, ask yourself: Why are my insides twisted into knots? Am I in control here or is my anxiety? And most important: Is my anxiety doing me any good?
ON BEING INVINCIBLE
“Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice.”
Have you ever watched a seasoned pro handle the media? No question is too tough, no tone too pointed or insulting. They parry every blow with humor, poise, and patience. Even when stung or provoked, they choose not to flinch or react.
It’s unlikely you’ll face a horde of probing reporters bombarding you with insensitive questions today. But it might be helpful—whatever stresses or frustrations or overload that do come your way—to picture that image and use it as your model for dealing with them.
when we finish, we can point back into the crowd and say, “Next!”
STEADY YOUR IMPULSES
Think of the manic people in your life. Not the ones suffering from an unfortunate disorder, but the ones whose lives and choices are in disorder. Everything is soaring highs or crushing lows; the day is either amazing or awful. Aren’t those people exhausting?
There is such a filter. Justice. Reason. Philosophy. If there’s a central message of Stoic thought, it’s this: impulses of all kinds are going to come, and your work is to control them, like bringing a dog to heel. Put more simply: think before you act. Ask: Who is in control here? What principles are guiding me?
DON’T SEEK OUT STRIFE
Theodore Roosevelt was a truly great man. But he was also driven by a compulsion, a work and activity addiction that was seemingly without end. Many of us share this affliction—being driven by something we can’t control. We’re afraid of being still, so we seek out strife and action as a distraction.
Yes, the man in the arena is admirable. As is the soldier and the politician and the businesswoman and all the other occupations. But, and this is a big but, only if we’re in the arena for the right reasons.
FEAR IS A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY
The leader, convinced that he might be betrayed, acts first and betrays others first. Afraid that he’s not well liked, he works so hard to get others to like him that it has the opposite effect. Convinced of mismanagement, he micromanages and becomes the source of the mismanagement.
The next time you are afraid of some supposedly disastrous outcome, remember that if you don’t control your impulses, if you lose your self-control, you may be the very source of the disaster you so fear.
DID THAT MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER?
“You cry, I’m suffering severe pain! Are you then relieved from feeling it, if you bear it in an unmanly way?”
The next time someone gets upset near you—crying, yelling, breaking something, being pointed or
cruel—watch how quickly this statement will stop them cold: “I hope this is making you feel better.”
The next time you find yourself in the middle of a freakout, or moaning and groaning with flulike symptoms, or crying tears of regret, just ask: Is this actually making me feel better? Is this actually relieving any of the symptoms I wish were gone?
YOU DON’T HAVE TO HAVE AN OPINION
“We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing and to not let it upset our state of mind—for things have no natural power to shape our judgments.”
