Focus on What You Control (Dichotomy of Control)
- Prioritise Your Efforts: Dedicate 100% of your energy to what is within your control, and 0% to what isn't. Worrying about things outside your control is pointless as it doesn't affect the outcome.
- Control Your Response: While you cannot control events, you can control how you respond to them. This is how you move forward; great leaders and individuals focus on their response.
- Don't Make Problems Worse: Avoid bemoaning or complaining about problems, as this makes them worse. Focus on what you can control and the good in the situation.
Practice Self-Awareness and Reflection
- Ask "Is This Essential?": Most of what we do and spend time on is not essential. Eliminate the inessential to better focus on what truly matters.
- Meditate on Your Mortality (Memento Mori): Understand that life is short and every moment is "purchased with your life." Don't waste time on things that don't matter; value time more than money or possessions.
- Own the Morning: Start your day well, and the rest of your day and life will follow. Get up early and do what you're meant to do.
- Review Your Day: At the end of each day, interrogate yourself: What could I have done better? Where did I fall short? Was I the person I aspire to be? This daily review helps you improve.
- Journal Every Day: Engage in a daily conversation with yourself through journaling to reflect, improve, and process frustrations without dumping them on others. It's "spiritual windshield wipers".
Manage Your Perceptions and Emotions
- Have No Opinion (Objectivity): Recognise that "it's not things that upset us, it's our opinion about things." You have the power to withdraw judgment and see things objectively, without immediately labelling them positive or negative.
- Don't Suffer Imagined Troubles: Avoid adding to your suffering by anticipating or worrying about future problems that may or may not happen. Deal with challenges when they arrive.
- Never Complain: Complaints are ineffective and don't solve anything. They are for "losers" and make you miserable. Focus on action and the good in a situation instead.
- Put Impressions to the Test: Pause between a stimulus and your response. Don't react emotionally; instead, choose who you want to be and what you want to feel and do.
- Choose Not to Be Harmed: When offended by others' remarks, remember you are complicit in your response. You can choose not to feel harmed, thus preventing the harm.
Embrace Life's Challenges and Adversity
- Love Everything That Happens (Amor Fati): Don't just accept, but embrace and love everything that happens to you, even difficult situations. See them as fuel for growth and opportunities, not as something happening to you, but for you.
- Seek Out Challenges: Actively pursue difficult things and challenges. Struggle makes you stronger, just as lifting weights builds muscle. Run towards challenges.
- The Obstacle is the Way: There's no problem so bad that it doesn't offer an opportunity for growth, learning, or an opening that otherwise wouldn't exist.
- Prepare for Setbacks (Premeditatio Malorum): Anticipate potential misfortunes like exile, war, or illness. By preparing for the worst, you lessen its impact and are pleasantly surprised if it doesn't happen.
Cultivate Positive Habits and Relationships
- Be a Product of Your Habits: Make excellent choices habitually, day in and day out, as they accumulate to define who you are.
- Make Small, Consistent Progress: Well-being is achieved through small, daily steps. Aim to become 1% better every day; this progress adds up significantly.
- Associate with People Who Make You Better: You are a reflection of your surroundings. Seek out friends and companions who inspire and improve you.
- Learn from Everyone: Everyone you meet can teach you something, even if it's a cautionary tale. Wisdom comes from continuous learning.
- Study the Lives of the Greats: Learn from historical figures and heroes to gain wisdom and avoid learning difficult lessons through trial and error.
Act with Integrity and Kindness
- See the Good in People: Make an effort to find something good in everyone, even difficult individuals, to avoid misery. Listen More Than You Talk: You have "two ears, one mouth for a reason." Listen more to learn and understand.
- Never Pass Up Kindness: Every situation is an opportunity to be kind, compassionate, and listen, as everyone is enduring their own struggles.
- What's Bad for the Hive is Bad for the Bee: Harming others harms yourself. Strive for actions that are good for both yourself and the community.
- Forgive, Forgive, Forgive: Let go of grudges, as forgiveness is a gift you give yourself that prevents misery.
- Don't Judge Others: Focus on scrubbing off your own flaws, not on judging other people's mistakes, especially those whose circumstances you don't fully understand.
- The Best Revenge is Not to Be Like That: Don't retaliate with bad behaviour. Instead, be the opposite and embody good conduct.
- Be Tolerant with Others, Strict with Yourself: Forgive others' errors, but hold yourself to high standards of self-discipline.
- Embody the Four Stoic Virtues: Live always with Courage, Temperance (moderation), Justice (fairness, honesty), and Wisdom (knowing how and when to apply the others).
Embrace Independent Thought and Humility
- Don't Follow the Mob: Think for yourself. If the majority is caught up in a fad or passion, step back and reflect to ensure you are doing what is truly right.
- Ego is the Enemy: Arrogance only makes things worse. Be humble, open-minded, and willing to learn. Your confidence should be based on evidence, not a belief of superiority.
- Stillness is the Key: Slow down, see things clearly, and tune out external noise and immediate biases to make better decisions. Be like a rock that remains still while waves crash around it.
Define Your Own Success
- Focus on Effort, Not Outcomes: Outcomes are often outside your control. Concentrate on the process and effort you put in. True success is internal: "Did I do what I set out to do?".
- Set Your Own Standards: Define what success means to you, rather than relying on external opinions or what others deem impressive. This makes you more likely to achieve it.
- Don't Identify with Success or Failure: Maintain an "even keel." Be humble in both success and failure, and don't let circumstances define who you are.
Live Proactively and Unattached
- Choose the "Smooth Handle": Every situation presents two ways to approach it – one empowering, one disempowering. Choose the handle that makes you better and offers an opportunity to act.
- Say No Often: Every "yes" to something non-essential is a "no" to something important. Say no to create more time and space for what truly matters.
- Don't Be Afraid to Ask for Help: Asking for help isn't giving up; it's refusing to give up. Be vulnerable.
- Possess Nothing in Trust: Understand that all possessions and even loved ones are temporary and "ours in trust only." You can only lose what you have. Enjoy them while you have them, but don't cling to them.
- Choose "Live Time" Over "Dead Time": Live every moment consciously and purposefully, rather than wasting or "killing" time, as each moment is precious.
Embody Your Philosophy
- Don't Just Talk, Be: The most important rule is to embody your philosophy, not just discuss it. "Waste no more time arguing what a good man is like. Just be one". Apply these rules daily and strive for continuous progress.