Like a lot of people, I try to collect words to live by. Most of these words come from reading, but also from conversations, from teachers, and from everyday life. As Seneca, the philosopher and playwright, so eloquently put it:

We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application—not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech—and learn them so well that words become works.

In my commonplace book, I keep these little sayings under the heading “Life.” That is, things that help me live better, more meaningfully, and with happiness and honesty. Below are 9 sayings, what they mean, and how they changed my life. Perhaps they will strike you and be of service. Hopefully the words might become works for you too.

“If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.” —Nassim Taleb

This little epigram from Nassim Taleb has been a driving force in my life. It fuels my writing, but mostly it has fueled difficult personal decisions. A few years ago, I was in the middle of a difficult personal situation in which my financial incentives were not necessarily aligned with the right thing. Speaking out would cost me money. I actually emailed Nassim. I asked: “What does ‘saying’ entail? To the person? To the public? At what cost? And how do you know where/when ego might be the influencing factor in determining where you decide to go on that public/private spectrum?” His response was simple: If it harms the collective, you speak up until it no longer does. There’s another line in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Caesar, having returned from the conquest of Gaul, is reminded to tread lightly when speaking to the senators. He replies, “Have I accomplished so much in battle, but now I’m afraid to tell some old men the truth?” That is what I think about with Nassim’s quote. What’s the point of working hard and being successful if it means biting your tongue (or declining to act) when you see something unfair or untoward? What do you care what everyone else thinks?

“It can have meaning if it changes you for the better.” —Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl, who was imprisoned and survived three separate Nazi concentration camps, lost his wife, his parents, job, his home and the manuscript that his entire life’s work had gone into. Yet, he emerged from this horrific nightmare convinced that life was not meaningless and that suffering was not without purpose. His work in psychology—now known as logotherapy—is reminiscent of the Stoics: We don’t control what happens to us, only how we respond. Nothing deprives us of this ability to respond, even if only in the slightest way, even if that response is only acceptance. In bad moments, I think of this line. It reminds me that I can change for the better because of it and find meaning in everything—even if my “suffering” pales in comparison to what others have gone through.

“Thou knowest this man’s fall; but thou knowest not his wrassling.” —James Baldwin

As James Baldwin reflected on the death of his father, a man who he loved and hated, he realized that he only saw the man’s outsides. Yes, he had his problems but hidden behind those external manifestations was his own unique internal struggle which no other person is ever able to fully comprehend. The same is true for everyone—your parents, your boss, the person behind you in line. We can see their flaws but not their struggles. If we can focus on this, we’ll have so much more patience and so much less anger and resentment. It reminds me of another line that means a lot to me from Pascal: “To understand is to forgive.” You don’t have to fully understand or know, but it does help to try.

“This is not your responsibility but it is your problem.” —Cheryl Strayed

Though I came to Cheryl Strayed late, the impact has been significant. In the letter this quote came from, she was speaking to someone who had something unfair done to them. But you see, life is unfair. Just because you should not have to deal with something doesn’t change whether you in fact need to. It reminds me of something my parents told me when I was learning to drive: It doesn’t matter that you had the right of way if you end up dying in an accident. Deal with the situation at hand, even if you don’t want to, even if someone else should have to, because you’re the one that’s being affected by it. End of story. Her quote is the best articulation I’ve found of that fact.

“Dogs bark at what they cannot understand.” —Heraclitus

People are going to criticize you. They are going to resist or resent what you try to do. You’re going to face obstacles and a lot of those obstacles will be other human beings. Heraclitus is explaining why. People don’t like change. They don’t like to be confused. It’s also a fact that doing new things means forcing change and confusion on other people. So, if you’re looking for an explanation for all the barking you’re hearing, there it is. Let it go, keep working, do your job. My other favorite line from Heraclitus is: “Character is fate.” Who you are and what you stand for will determine who you are and what you do. Surely character makes ignoring the barking a bit easier.

“Life is short—the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.” —Marcus Aurelius

Marcus wrote this line at some point during the Antonine Plague—a global pandemic spanning the entirety of his reign. He could have fled Rome. Most people of means did. No one would have faulted him if he did too. Instead, Marcus stayed and braved the deadliest plague of Rome’s 900-year history. And we know that he didn’t even consider choosing his safety and fleeing over his responsibility and staying. He wrote repeatedly about the Stoic concept of sympatheia—the idea that all things are mutually woven together, that we were made for eachother, that we are all one. It’s one of the lesser-known Stoic concepts because it’s easier to only think and care about the people immediately around you. It’s tempting to get consumed by your own problems. It’s natural to assume you have more in common and the same interests as the people who look like you or live like you do. But that is an insidious lie—one responsible for monstrous inhumanity and needless pain. When other people suffer, we suffer. When the world suffers, we suffer. What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee, Marcus said. When we take actions, we have to always think: What would happen if everyone did this? What are the costs of my decisions for other people? What risks am I externalizing? Is this really what a person with good character and a concern for others would do? You have to care about others. It’s sometimes the hardest thing to do, but it’s the only thing that counts. As Heraclitus (one of Marcus’ favorites) said, character is fate. It’s the fruit of this life. 

“Happiness does not come from the seeking, it is never ours by right.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt was a remarkable woman. Her father killed himself. Her mother was verbally abusive. Her husband repeatedly betrayed her—even up to the moment he died. Yet she slowly but steadily became one of the most influential and important people in the world. I think you could argue that happiness and meaning came from this journey too. Her line here is reminiscent of something explained by both Aristotle and Viktor Frankl—happiness is not pursued, it ensues. It is the result of principles and the fulfillment of our potential. It is also transitory—we get glimpses of it. We don’t have it forever and we must continually re-engage with it. Whatever quote you need to understand this truth, use it. Because it will get you through bad times and to very good ones.

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” —Marcus Aurelius

If there is better advice than this, it has yet to be written. For many civilizations, the first time that their citizens realize just how vulnerable they are is when they find out they’ve been conquered, or are at the mercy of some cruel tyrant, or some uncontainable disease. It’s when somebody famous—like Tom Hanks or Marcus Aurelius—falls ill that they get serious. The result of this delayed awakening is a critical realization: We are mortal and fragile, and fate can inflict horrible things on our tiny, powerless bodies. There is no amount of fleeing or quarantining we can do to insulate ourselves from the reality of human existence: memento mori—thou art mortal. No one, no country, no planet is as safe or as special as we like to think we are. We are all at the mercy of enormous events outside our control. You can go at any moment, Marcus was constantly reminding himself with each of the events swirling around him. He made sure this fact shaped every choice and action and thought. 

“Some lack the fickleness to live as they wish and just live as they have begun.” —Seneca

After beginning with Seneca, let’s end with him. Inertia is a powerful force. The status quo—even if self-created—is comforting. So people find themselves on certain paths in life and cannot conceive of changing them, even if such a change would result in more personal happiness. We think that fickleness is a negative trait, but if it pushes you to be better and find and explore new, better things, it certainly isn’t. I’ve always been a proponent of dropping out, of quitting paths that have gotten stale. Seneca’s quote has helped me with that and I actually have it framed next to my desk so that I might look at it each day. It’s a constant reminder: Why am I still doing this? Is it for the right reasons? Or is it just because it’s been that way for a while?

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The power of these quotes is that they say a lot with a little. They help guide us through the complexity of life with their unswerving directness. They make us better, keep us centered, give us something to rest on—a kind of backstop to prevent backsliding. That’s what these 9 quotes have done for me in my life. Borrow them or dig into history or religion or philosophy to find some to add to your own commonplace book. 

And then turn those words… into works.

In a world where everything is uncertain.

Where things are changing quickly. 

Where chaos reigns. 

And very little is under our control.

What we need is simple. 

It’s something that human beings have needed for all time—whether they were kings or artists, parents or farmers, senators or soldiers. 

We need practices.

What I’m not talking about are routines. Although daily routines are important, and many of us rely on them, the truth is that routines are fragile. 

Hasn’t this pandemic shown that? Suddenly you aren’t taking your kids to school. And then every part of your routine that is triggered by dropping the kids off starts to shift, like tectonic plates after an earthquake. Assuming, of course, that those other parts haven’t been crushed or subducted themselves. Suddenly you’re not able to go to your favorite  gym at your favorite time. Suddenly you’re not going into the office at all… because there is no office to go to. Your job no longer exists. 

Practices are different. Practices are things you do regularly—perhaps daily, perhaps not—but in no particular order. They are things you return to, time and time again, to center yourself. To reset. To reconnect. To focus. 

Waking up everyday at 6 a.m. and watching the news while you have your coffee: that’s part of a routine. Prayer or meditation: that’s a practice. Eating at the same lunch place and same time everyday is a routine. Being vegan or eating kosher is a practice. Journaling is a practice. Going to the 9 a.m. CrossFit class is a routine. Exercising regularly is a practice. 

The difference is in the flexibility. 

One is about daily rhythm. The other is a lifelong pursuit. One can be ruined by something as simple as hitting the snooze button one too many times or getting called into work unexpectedly. The other can adapt accordingly. One is something you made up. The other is something you do. 

Over the last couple years, I’ve gotten to interview some of the best artists on the planet about the behind-the-scenes of their work. “It’s a wild collage of human behavior,” as Austin Kleon has said about studying the routines of creative people, “like visiting a human zoo.” Some artists like the quiet before everyone else wakes up. Others like the quiet after everyone has gone to sleep. Some treat it like a 9-5. Others like a shift worker. Some break up the day with a nap. Others with a run. Some stop working when they run out of momentum, so they know where to pick back up tomorrow. Others when they are building momentum, so they know where to pick back up tomorrow. No two routines are the same.

And yet the key practices are nearly universal…

…journaling

…set wake up time

…quiet moments of reflection

…exercise

…reading

…walks

Think of someone like Marcus Aurelius. As we’ve talked about, he lived in a time of chaos and dysfunction, featuring brutal wars, devastating plagues, natural disasters, famines, political turmoil, and a plummeting economy. That’s to say nothing of his personal life—he buried eight children, his wife was probably unfaithful, his stepbrother and co-emperor was a ne’er-do-well, and his only son to outlive him was deranged. While his adopted father and cherished mentor, Antoninus, enjoyed a peaceful reign for over two decades, from the day Marcus put on the purple, it was one obstacle after the next. And it didn’t let up for any of the 15 years during which he ruled. 

It’d be hard to sum it up better than Cassius Dio: “He didn’t have the luck which he deserved… but was confronted, throughout his reign, by a multitude of disasters.”

But what centered him through all this were his daily practices. Journaling. Reading. Hunting and riding horses. A quick dip in the baths. Some friendly philosophical banter with Fronto or Sextus. Family time. If any of these were routine, he would have written somewhere in his journals or letters about when he preferred doing this or that. He didn’t have the luck or luxury to be rigid. Instead, he said, “to live life in peace” requires resilience and adaptability. Resilience is “keeping your mind calm… sizing up what’s around—and ready to make good use of whatever happens… while Adaptability adds, ‘You’re just what I was looking for.’”

Same with Seneca. His daily routine was undoubtedly subject to intrusion from his health problems, his exiles, and Nero’s descent into madness. But what remained remarkably consistent and unperturbed was his practice of letter writing, his habit of “wandering walks,” his cold plunges, and his search for “one piece of wisdom” per day. 

When we talk about stillness, we don’t mean the absence of activity. In fact, what we are referring to are activities that create stillness while the world is spinning out of control around us. Marcus Aurelius used the image of the rock surrounded by the raging sea. Perhaps a better image is of the Buddhist that Eugen Herrigal writes about in The Method of Zen, who calmly meditated through a terrible earthquake. 

This is what daily practices give us. 

Winston Churchill is a great example of how a good life should have both routine and practices. When at Chartwell, his estate, he liked to wake up at the same time each day, do the same things each day—especially when he was writing. There was the time he took his afternoon nap, the time he poured his first drink, the time he took his bath. That was part of the routine. But the bedrock practices—reading history and poetry, painting, bricklaying—these things transcended the day. They were lifelong pursuits. They were things he turned to whether a war was breaking out or whether his depression was creeping back into view. 

If he had time for these practices, then certainly you do too.

There is not a lot of good that can come out of a global pandemic, but one thing we can use it for is to reset and reorganize the building blocks our lives and our days are set upon.We can get our act together. We can create and adjust and fine-tune our habits and practices while we have the time. Because in a world filled with despair and chaos, what we need is hope and dependability. We have the power to create ritual and the moments of peace that ripple out from them. 

Maybe right now you’re stuck at home. Maybe you’re not working. Your kids might be home with you. Certainly the normal way of doing things has been significantly altered. Almost certainly, your routines have been blown apart. 

I experienced this when I had kids. I also experience it when I travel. As much as I would like this to be simple and controllable, it isn’t. So I’ve had to work to loosen my grip on the routines (plural) I’ve built over time and focus more on practices that don’t depend on my ability to do the same thing everyday in a precise way to be “successful.” 

Maybe your work is shift-based, or it’s the feast or famine life of a freelancer. It doesn’t matter. Routine might be out of reach, but practices never are. 

Wherever I am, whatever is going on, what I know is that every single day, I am able to make time to journal, to exercise, to walk, to write. The order can change, but the activities remain the same. I have rules too—for instance, no touching the phone for one hour after I wake up, I don’t watch television news, I’m only reachable through three channels, I never put more than three things on my calendar per day if I can help it, I fast for 16 hours, I don’t buy wi-fi on planes, I always carry a book with me. And if I am unable to do these things, or if the rules are violated, my productivity and my mental health suffers. 

That’s what the Stoics meant when they said you don’t control what happens, you only control how you respond. That’s what they meant when they said the one thing people can always change is themselves. And that’s what they meant when they said we are what we repeatedly do—when or how we manage to squeeze them in is less important than our religious commitment to their continued existence. 

Start today. Focus on your practices. In a world where everything and everyone else seems to be falling apart, you can make good use of this time and say, “You’re just what I was looking for.”

At the height of the financial crisis in 1975, Bill Belichick—the now six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach of the New England Patriots—was 23 years old and unemployed. Desperate for a job in football after an assistant position fell through, according to his biographer David Halberstam, he wrote some 250 letters to college and professional football coaches. Nothing came of it except a unpaid job for the Baltimore Colts. 

The Colts’ head coach desperately needed someone for the one part of the job everyone else disliked: analyzing film. 

Most people would have hated this job, especially back then, but it turned out to be the springboard through which the greatest coach in football was launched into his legendary career.

In this lowly position, Belichick thrived on what was considered grunt work, asked for it, and strove to become the best at precisely what others thought they were too good for. “He was like a sponge, taking it all in, listening to everything,” one coach said. “You gave him an assignment and he disappeared into a room and you didn’t see him again until it was done, and then he wanted to do more,” said another.

Most importantly, he made the other coaches look good. His insights gave them things they could give their players. It gave them an edge they would take credit for exploiting in the game. 

It’s a strategy that all of us ought to follow, whatever stage of our careers we happen to be in. Forget credit. Do the work. 

I’m lucky enough someone told me that early on, and I still try to follow it today. Don’t worry about credit, they said. Starting as an assistant in Hollywood, the best thing I could do was make my boss look good. 

Forget credit so hard, they said, that you’re glad when other people get it instead of you.

It ended up being pretty decent advice, but it was nowhere near the right wording. I certainly wouldn’t have moved upwards as quickly as I have if I’d just sat there and worked on the way people thought about my boss.

Now that I’ve been around a bit, I think a better way to express it would be:

Find canvases for other people to paint on.

It’s what I now call the canvas strategy.

I used it as a research assistant for bestselling authors. I used it as Head of Marketing for American Apparel. And I continue to use it with my company Brass Check, advising companies like Google and Complex, as well as multi-platinum musicians and some of the biggest authors in the world.

I even wrote a chapter about it in Ego Is the Enemy.

One of the things I kept coming across in my research was that Belichick wasn’t unique. So many of the greats—everyone from Michelangelo to Leonardo da Vinci to Benjamin Franklin—used the same strategy to become great. The strategy? The canvas strategy.

In the Roman system of art and science, there existed a concept for which we have only a partial analog. Successful businessmen, politicians and rich playboys would subsidize certain favored writers, artists, and performers.

More than just being paid to produce works of art, these artists performed a number of tasks in exchange for protection, food and gifts. One of the roles was that of an anteambulo, literally meaning one who clears the path.

An anteambulo proceeded in front of his patron anywhere they traveled in Rome, making way, communicating messages, and generally making the patron’s life easier. The artists who did this were rewarded with stipends and commissions that allowed them to pursue their art.

That takes humility. The canvas strategy takes humility.

It’s a common attitude that transcends generations and societies—the angry, underappreciated geniuses forced to do stuff she doesn’t like for people she doesn’t respect as she makes her way in the world. How dare they force me to grovel like this. The injustice, the waste.

But when you enter a new field, we can usually be sure of a few things:

1. You’re not nearly as good or as important as you think you are.
2. You have an attitude that needs to be readjusted.
3. Most of what you think you know, or most of what you learned in books or in school, is out of date or wrong.

There’s one fabulous way to work all of that out of your system:

Attach yourself to people in organizations who are already successful and subsume your identity into theirs and move both forward simultaneously.

It’s certainly more glamorous to pursue your own glory, though hardly as effective. Obeisance is the way forward. That’s the other side of this attitude. It reduces your ego at a critical time in your career, letting you absorb everything you can without the obstructions that block other’s vision and progress.

Imagine if for every person you met you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them, and you looked at it in a way that entirely benefitted them and not you. The cumulative effect this would have overtime would be profound.

You would learn a great deal by solving diverse problems.

You’d develop a reputation for being indispensable.

You’d have countless new relationships.

You’d have an enormous bank of favors to call upon down the road.

That’s what the canvas strategy is about—helping yourself by helping others, making a concerted effort to trade your short term gratification for a longer term payoff.

Whereas everyone else wants to get credit and be respected, you could forget credit. Let others take their credit on credit while you defer and earn interest on the principle.

The strategy part of it is the hardest. It’s easy to be bitter, to hate even the thought of subservience, to despise those who have more means, more experience, more status than you, to tell yourself that every second not spent doing your work or working on yourself is a waste of your gift to insist, I will not be demeaned like this.

Once we fight this emotional and egotistical impulse, the canvas strategy is easy. The iterations are endless.

• Maybe it’s coming up with ideas to hand over to your boss.
• Find people, thinkers, up and comers to introduce them to. Cross wires to create new sparks.
• Find what nobody else wants to do and do it.
• Find inefficiency and waste and redundancies. Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas.
• Produce more than everyone else and give your ideas away.

In other words, discover opportunities to promote their creativity, find outlets and people for collaboration, and eliminate distractions that hinder their progress and focus. It’s a rewarding and infinitely scalable power strategy. Consider each one an investment in relationships and in your own development.

If you pick up this mantle once, you’ll see what most people’s egos prevent them from appreciating. The person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas shapes the painting.