Perhaps it takes something as crazy as the world right now to understand what that word stillness means. Intuitively, instinctively, when we hear it—especially right now—we know the importance of stillness. 

The quiet. The confidence. The gratitude and happiness. The beauty. The ability to step back and reflect. Being steady while everything spins around you. Acting without frenzy. Hearing only what needs to be heard. 

As Rome was being scourged by plague and war, Marcus Aurelius wrote about being “like the rock that the waves keep crashing over,” the one that “stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.” “Shrug it all off,” he writes, “wipe it clean—every annoyance and distraction—and reach utter stillness.”

YES! 

But how?

Thankfully, there are thousands of years of teachings about how to get there, proven exercises that will help you keep steady, disciplined, focused, at peace, and able to access your full capabilities at any time, in any place, despite any distraction and every difficulty. 

They come from across all the wisdom of the ancient world. I detail all of them in my book Stillness Is the Key, but here are 10 I adapted specifically for the crazy times we currently find ourselves in. These 10 ways to achieve stillness will work… but only if you work them.

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Stop Watching the News. The number-one thing to filter out if you want more equanimity in your life? The news! Epictetus had it right: “You become what you give your attention to… If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will.” He also said that if we wish to improve, we must be content to be clueless on extraneous matters— the chatter, the idiots, the breaking gossip and the trivia that everyone else obsesses over. Not only does the news cost us our peace of mind, but it actually prevents us from creating real change, right now. Being informed is important… watching the news in real time is not how you get there. If you’d turned off the news in the US in March, what would have missed? You’re still supposed to wear a mask, it’s still wrong to be a racist, still wrong to loot or burn, incompetent leaders are still incompetent. But if you’d spent that time productively working, what could you have accomplished? And how much less anxious would you be?

Read Books. When I look at the stack of books I have managed to get through since the pandemic began seriously in America in March, not only do I feel fondness for the hours spent in those pages, but I know I am better off for what I learned. Dorothy Day, the Catholic journalist and social activist, wrote in her diary in 1942, “Put away your daily paper… and spend time reading.” She meant books. Read big, smart, wonderful books. Read the works of writers who took more time thinking about what they write than their readers do. Read what a writer poured their heart into, not what tries to pull yours out. Read what’s timeless, not timely. If you’re stressed, stop whatever you’re doing and sit down with a book. You’ll find yourself calming down. You’ll get absorbed into a different world. William Osler, one of the four founders of Johns Hopkins University, told aspiring medical students that when chemistry or anatomy distressed their soul, to “seek peace in the great pacifier, Shakespeare.” It doesn’t have to be plays—any great literature will do. Books are a way to get stillness on demand.

Journal. According to her father Otto, Anne Frank didn’t write in her journal every day, but she always wrote when she was upset or dealing with a problem. One of her best and most insightful lines must have come on a particularly difficult day. “Paper,” she said, “has more patience than people.” I journal each morning as a way of starting the day off fresh—I put my baggage down on the page so that I don’t have to carry it to meetings or to breakfast with my family. I start the day with stillness by pouring out what is not still into my journal. It’s a frustrating world out there, and Anne Frank is right: Paper is more patient than people. Don’t forget that there’s no right way or wrong way to journal. The point is just to do it. Whether you’re brand-new to the concept of journaling or you’ve journaled in the past and fallen out of practice, this ultimate guide to journaling will tell you everything you need to know to help you make journaling one of the best things you do.

Go for a Walk (or a Run). We are an ambulatory species and often the best way to find stillness—in our hearts and in our heads—is to get up and out on our feet. Personally, I’ve run and walked close to 1,300 miles since lockdown started. It’s not about burning calories or getting your heart rate up. On the contrary, it’s not about anything. It is instead just a manifestation, an embodiment of the concepts of presence, of detachment, of emptying the mind, of noticing and appreciating the beauty of the world around you. Walk away from the thoughts that need to be walked away from; walk toward the ones that have now appeared. On a good walk, the mind is not completely blank. It can’t be—otherwise you might trip over a root or get hit by a car or a bicyclist. The point is not, as in traditional meditation, to push every thought or observation from your mind. The point is to see what’s around you. The mind might be active while you do this, but it is still. It’s a different kind of thinking, a healthier kind if you do it right. A study at New Mexico Highlands University has found that the force from our footsteps can increase the supply of blood to the brain. Researchers at Stanford have found that walkers perform better on tests that measure “creative divergent thinking” during and after their walks. A study out of Duke University found that walking could be as effective a treatment for major depression in some patients as medication. When you inevitably find yourself a little stuck or frustrated today—go for a walk. Or better yet, go for a run.

Enjoy the Simple Pleasures. If you can teach yourself to be grateful for and to enjoy the ordinary pleasures, you will be happier than just about everyone. A bowl of cereal. A good sunset. A nice conversation with a friend. These are the moments to treasure. We don’t need to become emperor to feel good. We don’t need fancy restaurants. We don’t need to travel to exotic locations. We have so much available to us right now. The only catch is that you have to be here for it. You have to be present. You have to be grateful. You have to understand that every day you wake up alive and well is wonderful.  

Build a Routine. When things are chaotic and crazy, when the world feels like it’s falling apart, we need to create structure. Eisenhower famously said that freedom was properly defined as the opportunity for self-discipline, and so it is with disorder—it’s an opportunity to create order. Without a disciplined schedule, chaos and complacency and confusion move in. What was I going to do? What do I wear? What should I eat? What should I do first? What should I do after that? What sort of work should I do? Should I scramble to address this problem or rush to put out this fire? That’s not stillness, that’s torture. But when you routinize, disturbances give you less trouble. They’re boxed out—by the order and clarity you built. We need that order and clarity, especially now. (If you need some ideas on how to structure your day, here’s the routine Marcus Aurelius followed every day.) 

Seek Solitude. Randall Stutman, who for decades has been the behind-the-scenes advisor for many of the biggest CEOs and leaders on Wall Street, once studied how several hundred senior executives of major corporations recharged in their downtime. The answers were things like swimming, sailing, long-distance cycling, listening quietly to classical music, scuba diving, riding motorcycles, and fly fishing. All these activities, he noticed, had one thing in common: an absence of voices. Bill Gates schedules “think weeks” where he goes off by himself and just reads and thinks. I like to do my thinking while running and swimming and taking walks—and many of my book ideas have come from these activities. And how wonderful have the last few months been with fewer meetings? Fewer events? With quiet time to yourself? To think? To learn? To reconnect with what matters?  

Zoom Out. Marcus Aurelius wanted us “to bear in mind constantly that all of this has happened before. And will happen again—the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging.” That’s not to say this problem isn’t serious. That’s not to say we aren’t facing real troubles. Of course we are. But we can turn down the volume of our anxiety and fear when we realize that this is just history unfolding before us. When we get overwhelmed or puffed up, we must find relief in remembering that none of this is new. That, in fact, this pattern of disease is nauseatingly familiar. It’s a pattern that has repeated itself like a fractal across history. Indeed, we could be talking about the “Antonine Plague” that killed millions of people during Marcus Aurelius’s reign, the Black Death, the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, or the cholera pandemics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, just as easily as we are today talking about COVID-19. As Marcus would say, all we’d have to do is change a few dates and names. All of this is running according to a tired script as old as time. Don’t let it get you down. This, Seneca believed, is the way to make all our problems, even the really vexing and painful ones, loosen their grip on us and seem less severe as a result. All you have to do, he says, is this: “Draw further back and laugh.” 

Make Time for Hobbies. “If action tires your body but puts your heart at ease,” Xunzi said, “do it.” Winston Churchill loved to paint and lay bricks on his country estate; his predecessor William Gladstone loved to chop down trees by hand. Even Jesus liked to go fishing with his friends! Assembling a puzzle, struggling with a guitar lesson, sitting on a quiet morning in a hunting blind, steadying a rifle or a bow while we wait for a deer, ladling soup in a homeless shelter, a long swim, lifting heavy weights—these are all great hobbies. One of the lovely trends I’ve been seeing is people baking bread, canning jams and pickles, and making food for friends and neighbors. They are rediscovering that life is made for living, not just for working. They are discovering the joy of simple activity. Mine are running and swimming and working on my farm. The last five evenings, my four-year-old and I went fishing for a few minutes after dinner. Engaged in these activities, my body is busy but my mind is open. My heart is, too.

Do Something for the Greater Good. The phrase “common good” appears more than 80 times in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. He said a good life is simply about moving from one unselfish action to another—“Only there,” he said, can we find “delight and stillness.” If we want to be good and feel good, we have to do good. Remember the Boy Scout slogan: Do a good turn daily. It can be big, or it can be small. It can be picking up trash you find on the ground or rushing to the scene of an accident. Doing good creates spiritual stillness. It makes the world a better place. Especially in a time where we seem to have lost our community-mindedness. Instinctually, overwhelmingly, everyone is now focused on themselves and their immediate unit. Gone is the spirit of the common good that Marcus talked so much about. Replacing it is anti-vaxxing, anti-masks, people having COVID parties so they can get the virus and be done with the hassle, the immuno-compromised be damned. Don’t let the modern spirit of selfishness infect you. Instead, focus on remembering what we are here. We are here for each other. We are part of something bigger than ourselves, a greater good to which we all owe a duty, above and beyond our own selfish concerns and desires. There is no one more still and admirable than the person who takes that duty seriously—and no one less still and admirable than the person who blows it off. 

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Stillness has been the secret weapon of the Stoics and the Buddhists, the Christians, the followers of Confucius, Epicurus, and so many others for thousands of years for a reason. Because it can help us thrive in a world that’s spinning faster than ever. 

Stillness is the key to the good life, whatever that looks like for you. It’s the key to career success, to happiness, to enduring adversity, to appreciating the wonders of existence. You know you want more of it. You know how special it is. We have all felt its power.

Now go get more of it.

It’s so easy to be overwhelmed by what’s happening in the world, but there is no greatness without stillness. It’s why the Stoics, the Buddhists, the Christians all talked about it as an essential virtue. My latest book, Stillness Is the Key debuted #1 on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists and is a formula for finding calm (and focus) amidst the din of everyday life. Check it out now.

One thing this pandemic has shown is that people have a problem facing facts. 

I don’t mean facts in the sense of the scientific data, although that’s clearly a problem as well judging by the litany of conspiracy theories that have become acceptable even in polite company. 

I mean “facts” in the more colloquial sense—of coming to terms with reality and accepting it on reality’s terms. Just look at COVID-19.

We’ve taken a merciless, apolitical, indifferent but pretty well-understood virus, scientifically speaking, and turned it into a divisive, partisan argument. Every molecule seems subject to debate, because we have somehow come to believe that what we think about it, or our own personal needs in relation to it, have some relevance to its airborne spread from person to person, and its ability to kill with ruthlessness and painful efficiency. 

Perhaps nothing captures this impotent rage better than a tweet I saw from Laura Ingraham…

OK, Karen, would you like to speak to COVID-19’s manager?

Back here in reality where the rest of us live, it is an inescapable truth of human existence that there are some crises and problems so bad that they force those affected by them to live with the uncertainty that the crises create. They force us to stop doing things we’d like to do. They cost us things we really can’t afford. 

But, alas, there is no degree of forcefulness to an opinion nor staggering amount of need that can change those facts. 

Imagine someone living in America in 1942. No one could have told them when they’d be able to travel to Europe to see their aging parents again. No one could have told them when the rationing would stop. No one would have been able to say when their son would be released from the Army. No one could promise them that they were safe in their homes and would ultimately survive. The world war was a fact, and everybody had to deal with it. Like it or not. 

Life is like this. It’s uncertain. It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t really care whether we really want or need something. It doesn’t care about us at all, really, it just is. 

Many years ago, I wrote a piece about our tendency to think that we could “vote on reality,” and how the internet was designed to encourage this impulse. From Twitter to Facebook to blogging, the platforms of social media are designed around the insidious idea that your opinion about things changes what they unflinchingly are. 

I think this is what Foster the People is singing about in their song, “The Truth”:

Well an absolute measure won’t change with opinion

no matter how hard you try

It’s an immovable thing

We are seduced by the idea that not liking some element of reality is powerful enough to will it to be different. That a simple objection is more powerful than objectivity. Of course, the Stoics had no time for this. Facts are facts, they say. Fate or Fortune or death have no care for your opinion. 

They were like Civil War historian James McPherson who, responding to Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 claim that European allies seemed to care more about tiny Northern defeats than his major victories, said simply: “Unreasonable it may have been, but it was a reality.” 

When we talk about facing facts, we are in part talking about making the hard choices that life demands—which usually means doing the harder thing. “At the top,” Secretary of State Dean Acheson once observed about the presidency, “there are no easy choices. All are between evils, the consequences of which are hard to judge.” He meant that all the simple, easy stuff gets handled by people lower down on the chain. The obvious stuff never makes it to the Oval Office. And so it is with life, too—the easy stuff is never much of an issue. There’s never any uncertainty about the things that don’t require any sacrifice and pain. 

I think he also means that it’s not the choices that are hard. In fact, the right thing is often obvious. It’s the consequences and the costs of that choice that are hard. It’s the complicated, difficult, unpleasant stuff that we adults end up having to wrestle with on the other side of our decisions that make the decisions seem so difficult. 

In reality, when it comes to a pandemic or a bankruptcy or a failing marriage, the choices are easy to the extent that they are simple and clear. It’s this or this. It’s A or B or C. The difficulty comes with the hard facts that must be swallowed as a consequence of picking one of those easy choices. Don’t you dare think that Acheson, when he said the consequences were hard to judge, was excusing leaders who preferred their own fantasies or wishful thinking to the hard realities of geopolitics.  

I see this with some of my friends, now considering whether to send their kids back to school. Even though most of the advice is against it; even though they regularly go overboard protecting their families from all sorts of much less dangerous things than a pandemic; even though they are otherwise good people who care about how their actions affect others—here they are saying something to the effect of “Well, it’s just so hard to know what the right thing is.”

Or my favorite: “How much longer can this go on?”

Truth goes on as long as it’s true!

What we’re saying when we throw up our hands at something like reopening the schools is, “I have a sense that I’m not making the right decision, but if I act bewildered, it excuses me from the consequences.” Or they are saying, “I get that generally this is a really bad idea, but my specific circumstances should be exempt from the otherwise unfavorable facts because it hasn’t been a problem in my town yet and the consequences of the other choice are more difficult than I’m comfortable with.” No! 

How has the track record for not listening to expert opinion gone in the United States over the last five months? Oh, right, it’s created one of the worst coronavirus breakouts in the world, one that has seen US citizens banned from international travel en masse, and has mayors from Texas to New York City requesting extra freezer trucks to support their overflowing morgues. We’re zeroing in on 200,000 dead! 67 9/11s. Four Vietnams. Eight times more than the American Revolution. (And the fact that lots of people also die of heart disease is not a response. They are dying of that too.) The country that, for a century, was called to rescue other countries from natural disasters is now the unlikely recipient of pity from New Zealand, Italy and Denmark. People love to talk about American exceptionalism—well, we are being exceptionally stupid.

And so we are now entering another phase of the crisis that will undeniably be shaped by people who, instead of dealing honestly and critically with the reality of the situation, are letting all sorts of other factors shape what they’re seeing (note: obviously the real blame lies with the feckless leaders who put them in the position in the first place). No sane person would look at a country with tens of thousands of new cases and 1,000+ deaths a day and think: “I should probably send my kid to hang out with thousands of other kids in small rooms, right?” Yet here we are, talking about how life has to go back to normal sometime…

But kids need school! you reply. 

I am reminded of a conversation between Col. Harry G. Summers and a North Vietnamese colonel after the Vietnam War. Summers pointed out that the US was never beaten on the battlefield. The man replied, “That is true. It is also irrelevant.”

We need a lot of things. My kids certainly do. But the facts come first, so we’re staying home. Not because we want to, but because, in truth, there is no choice. It’s why my businesses remain closed too. 

There is not much upside in a pandemic—not one that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans and close to a million people worldwide. But there is a lesson in it. 

It’s a lesson that we have done our best not to learn, that we have fought for some time now. 

That lesson is this: Life is hard. It is filled with hard facts and hard decisions. 

You cannot flee it. You can only defer the consequences for so long or, perhaps, if you are content to be an asshole, shirk them onto some other innocent person. 

Facts don’t care how hard they are. Just because you can’t bear something doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be borne. Just because you have an opinion—or a need—doesn’t mean it’s relevant. 

“There is a truth,” it says in the song I mentioned earlier, “I can promise you that.” 

It’s time to wake up, put on our big boy pants, and accept that we are living through a period of great discomfort and frightening uncertainty, and what you think or feel about that fact has precisely zero impact on the truth of our new reality  

We have to face the truth. Do the hard thing. 

*Two wrap up notes:

If you really really disagree with me on the school thing, just plug in any number of other examples: People going ahead with their weddings. Random hookups on Tinder because they “need the spontaneity.” People going on vacations. Pro football stadiums in Florida filled with fans. People who say things like, I like Trump but hate his tweets. 

And most importantly, if you disagree with me so much that this article makes you angry? Do me a favor and don’t reply. Your opinion will not change the facts, and I’m too tired to deal with anyone’s cognitive dissonance these days.

In a book that changed my life, Marcus Aurelius thanks his mentor for introducing him to the book that changed his life. 

One person passing along brilliant writing to another: it’s a tradition as old as time. You may even already be a part of that tradition. You may have been introduced to a life-changing book by a friend or a family member.

But do you actively seek out more of these experiences? When was the last time you asked someone you admired for a book recommendation—or more specifically, for the book that changed their life? You hear smart people talking about books they’re reading or thinking about all the time, but do you make the effort to read them too? Or do they just sit on your mental to-do list or your Amazon “save for later” list, never to be read?

Imagine if Marcus just let that book sit on his desk. Imagine if he kept saving it for later. His whole life would have turned out differently. The history of the Western world may have been altered. Don’t let a version of that happen to you. Read these books. They will change your life.

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Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

To me, this is the greatest book ever written. I’ve read it a couple hundred times and have a large passage that I printed out and posted above my desk to look at before I start each day. For me, it was what Tyler Cowen calls a “quake book”—shaking everything I thought I knew about the world. It is the definitive text on self-discipline, personal ethics, humility, self-actualization and strength. If you read it and aren’t profoundly changed by it, it’s probably because, as Aurelius says, “what doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.” You HAVE to read the Gregory Hays translation. If you want a preview of Marcus, here are five of his best quotes in a video I did. 

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

If you want to live life on your terms, climb as high as you know you’re capable, and avoid being controlled by others—you need to read this book. Robert is an amazing researcher and storyteller. He has a profound ability to explain timeless truths through story and example. You can read the classics and not always understand the lessons. But if you read The 48 Laws of Power, I promise you will leave not just with actionable lessons but an indelible sense of what to do in many trying and confusing situations. Is there a darkness to this book? Yes. But there is a darkness to life, too. You have to understand it, be able to defend against it, and know how to know what you’re not willing to do. Here is my podcast with Robert about this book and others. 

The Autobiography of Malcolm X 

In 1946, Malcolm Little went to jail. Looking at a decade behind bars, he faced what Robert Greene calls an “Alive Time or Dead Time” scenario. He could have served his time simply counting the days. Instead, he started reading. He literally copied the dictionary word for word. Every minute he wasn’t in his bunk, he was in the library. That was how Malcolm Little was transformed into Malcolm X, one of the great civil rights leaders of the 20th century. There’s a lot to learn from his life and his choices. Two other timelessly relevant books these days are Invisible Man and My Bondage and My Freedom.

How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell 

Montaigne is one of humanity’s greatest treasures—a wise and insightful thinker who never takes himself too seriously. This book is spectacular. The format is a bit unusual—instead of chapters, it is made up of 20 Montaigne-style essays that discuss the man from a variety of different perspectives. Montaigne was a man obsessed with figuring himself out: why he thought the way he did, how he could find happiness, his fetishes, his near-death experiences. He lived in tumultuous times too, and he coped by looking inward. We’re lucky that he did, and we can do the same. (You might also like this piece I wrote almost a decade ago for Tim Ferriss’ blog, The Experimental Life: An Introduction to Michel de Montaigne.) This year I also re-read Stefan Zweig’s book about Montaigne, which is incredible. It’s the biography of a man who retreated from the chaos of 16th century France to study himself, written by a man fleeing the chaos of 20th century Europe. When I say it’s timely, I mean that it’s hard to be a thinking person and not see alarming warning signs about today’s world while reading this book.

History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

“There is no History, perhaps, better adapted to this useful purpose than that of Thucydides,” as John Adams wrote to his son in 1777. “You will find it full of Instruction to the Orator, the Statesman, the General, as well as to the Historian and the Philosopher.” Indeed, people in the State Department right now are reading Thucydides to better understand the rising threat of China. Countless millions—including many of the Stoics—have read it over the last 2000 years to understand the ethical dilemmas inherent in leadership, in war, in politics, and in life. Because Thucydides was so smart, so timeless, he is able to teach lessons to us even now. And because the countries and the events are so distant and impersonal to us, we can actually hear them, learn them, and apply them to the political situations we face today. 

Plutarch’s Lives

The structure and style of my next book—Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius—was inspired by Plutarch, the master of one of my favorite categories of books to recommend—moral biographies. That is, short biographical sketches about great men and women, written with an eye towards practical application and advice. As Plutarch prefaced his portrait of Alexander the Great, “I am writing biography, not history, and the truth is that the most brilliant exploits often tell us nothing of the virtues or vices of the men who performed them, while on the other hand a chance remark or a joke may reveal far more of a man’s character than the mere feat of winning battles in which thousands fall.” That’s why Shakespeare based many of his plays on the stories of Plutarch; not only are they well-written and exciting, but they exhibit everything that is good and bad about the human condition. Greed, love, pain, hate, success, selflessness, leadership, stupidity—it’s all there. 

What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg

This was one of the first books I read when I started working in Hollywood, and it had a powerful impact on me at 19. Some 10 years later, I pulled the book from my shelf while finishing the first draft of Ego Is the Enemy and rediscovered three handwritten pages of notes I folded and stuck in the back. Those notes expressed many of the painful lessons I wanted to share in Ego, so I adapted them into the epilogue that made it to publication. What Makes Sammy Run? is a novel that reminds us that even when egotists “win,” they lose. My favorite quote: “What a tremendous burning and blinding light ambition can be where there is something behind it, and what a puny flickering sparkler when there isn’t.” It’s also a fascinating look at the entertainment industry and what makes hustlers and strivers do the things they do.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

A man is sent to a concentration camp and finds some way for good to come of it. He finds some way to turn it into the ultimate metaphor for life: that we have little control over our circumstances, but complete control over our attitude and the ability to make meaning out of the things which happen to us. In Frankl’s case, we are lucky that he was a brilliant psychologist and writer and managed to turn all this into one of the most important books of the 20th century. I constantly think of his line about the man who asks, “What is the meaning of life?” The answer is that you don’t get to ask the question. Life is the one who asks and we must reply with our actions.

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen

There is nobody who has exposed me to more books and ideas than Tyler Cowen. Tyler is a polymath, a diverse and contrarian thinker who has incredible taste in ideas, ways of thinking, and modern and classical wisdom. In terms of business/economics, Average Is Over is one of the more important books I’ve ever read. For a long time, I even kept a framed passage from it on my wall (it also inspired a piece of writing I am proud of). Although much of what Cowen proposes will be uncomfortable, he has a tone that borders on cheerful. I think that’s what makes this so convincing and so eye-opening.

Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin

This is an absolutely incredible book. It is a study of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Lyndon Johnson, and it is so clearly the culmination of a lifetime of research… and yet, somehow, it is not overwhelming or boring. Distillation at its best! I have read extensively on each of those figures and I got a ton out of it. Even with things I already knew, I benefited from Goodwin’s perspective. This is the perfect book to read right now. 

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Now, the most important part. “To read attentively,” as Marcus put it, “not to be satisfied with ‘just getting the gist of.’” Go to the library. Pull up Amazon and buy the cheapest used copy you can find. “Borrow it” from a friend. Whatever it takes—read. It will change your life!