In ​his letters​—the pre-digital medium for distant long-form conversation—Seneca instructs his friend Lucilius to find one thing each day that will fortify him against death, despair, fear, or adversity. Just one thing. One nugget. And that’s what most of Seneca’s letters to his friend are about. They have a quote in them. Or a little prescription. Or a story. But in each case, Seneca is explicit. Here’s your lesson for the day, he says. Here’s your one thing.

Obviously that’s the logic behind the daily emails I write (​Daily Stoic​ and ​Daily Dad​), but it’s also the way I try to live. Every time I listen to a podcast or record one myself, I try to walk away having grabbed at least one little thing. That’s how wisdom is accumulated—piece by piece, day by day, book by book, podcast by podcast.

It’s not much, but considering the scale of ​The Daily Stoic Podcast​, it’s actually added up quite a bit. I’ve interviewed roughly 200 people over the last five years. That’s maybe 300 hours of audio with people who’ve won Academy Awards, the Super Bowl, and sold millions of records. I’ve also probably appeared on ~250 shows myself since my first book came out in 2012. Here’s a list of stuff I have learned that I think is worth passing along…

– The novelist Philipp Meyer (whose book ​The Son​ is an incredible read) ​said​, “You have to be very careful about to what (and to whom) you’re giving the best part of your day.”

– When I ​interviewed Gretchen Rubin​, one of the most thought-provoking and influential experts on happiness, she told me about one of the things she learned from her former boss, the Supreme Court’s first female justice, Sandra Day O’Connor. Shortly after Gretchen published ​The Happiness Project​, she asked O’Connor who she had clerked for, what is the secret to happiness? O’Connor replied, “The secret to happiness is work worth doing.” Perfect.

– Something I’ve started implementing ​from Adam Grant​: in addition to coaches and mentors, you need to have judges. Adam was a competitive springboard diver growing up, “and I found it enormously helpful to get a 0 to 10 score every time I came out of the water.” When he transitioned from sports to the work world, he found it hard to get useful feedback. “So I started asking people—I would give them drafts—and I’d ask, ‘can you rate this 0 to 10?’” After a presentation—what would you score that 0 to 10? After giving a talk, after leading a meeting, after publishing a newsletter, whatever—ask, can you score this 0 to 10?

– I got a cold plunge tub after ​talking to Joe Rogan on his podcast​. Before then, I thought all the data about the physical benefits of taking cold plunges was mostly bullshit. But Joe talked about the mental benefits—“Difficult things are good for you,” he said. “They’re good for your mind.” It echoes Seneca: “We treat the body rigorously so that it will not be disobedient to the mind.”

– The famous philosopher Diogenes the Cynic was once seen begging for money from a statue. What on earth are you doing, someone asked. “I’m getting practice in being refused,” Diogenes replied. I’ve talked to a couple professional baseball players on ​the podcast​ (​Ian Happ​ and ​Scott Oberg​ are both must listens) as well as professional basketball players (​Chris Bosh​ and ​Cuttino Mobley​) and entrepreneurs (​Tim Ferriss​ and ​Rob Dyrdek​). One thing they’ll all tell you is that a person who is afraid to strike out, afraid to miss, afraid to fail is a person who will not succeed.

– After running 100 miles in less than 24 hours, Nate Boyer told me, “the worst part was the expansive flat portions without the ups and downs—there might be a life lesson in that.”

– My wife Samantha and I started recording conversations (​here​, ​here​, ​here​, and ​here​) for ​The Daily Dad Podcast​, and it’s become one of my favorite podcast formats. We talk about things we’re working on as parents, how we can better support each other, tips we’ve picked up from books or from other parents, phases our kids are going through, how to handle and adapt to those phases, and really just all things parenting.

– ​The mental performance coach Greg Harden​ (who has worked with Tom Brady and Michael Phelps, among countless other top performers) had a great line: in the way that the ability to quickly recover after a workout is an indicator of physical fitness, “People who are mentally fit recover faster than the average person.”

– The serial entrepreneur ​Kevin Rose made a good point​ about how things don’t just cost you monetarily. They cost you mentally too. “The thing that I’ve realized is that every object I own, every thing, is a subconscious mental burden. Without a doubt. It can be the wheel-barrow that has a flat tire sitting out in the backyard—some part of me is thinking about how I know I have to figure out how to get that fixed at some point. So I’ve reduced the stuff that I have by an order of magnitude.”

– In August of 1967, Lieutenant Dave Carey was shot out of his A-4 Skyhawk over Vietnam. Soon enough, he found himself a prisoner in Hanoi, where he would subsequently be beaten, tortured and placed into solitary confinement. For six years, he languished there, kept going only by the comrades around him, and an occasional pick me up from the Stoics. As Carey ​told me in an incredible episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast​, fellow prisoners would tap, “Stockdale wants you to remember what Epictetus said,” from an adjoining cell. Carey came to understand this to mean ​focus on what you control​, focus on the choices you can make.

– Related, ​I asked Jocko Willink​ what his advice would be for leaders during turbulent times. “Really, it just comes down to having humility.” It’s immediately and unflinchingly accepting the reality of the situation. Not denying the problem, running from it, or expecting magical thinking to rescue you.

– ​I had an incredible conversation with the historian Heather Cox Richardson​, who writes “Letters From an American”—the Substack newsletter with the most number of subscribers. This line stuck with me: “it’s a truism in American history that if you have rights, you plead the Constitution. If you want rights, you plead the Declaration.”

– One of the great perks of my life is getting to have regular conversations with one of the great writers of our time, Robert Greene. ​We recently decided to record one of those conversations​. I asked him about what I think is the thread through all his books, something which is also in short supply these days: an unflinching commitment to reality, even when it’s inconvenient. “Whenever I hold a belief, or I’m writing a book,” Robert explained, “I always start with the premise that I’m probably wrong, that I’m actually quite ignorant, that my idea is pretty stupid. And I look at the evidence on the other side and I examine it and I try to convince myself that my initial idea was right. And if it isn’t, then I change it.”

– The legendary music producer ​Rick Rubin​ (we actually did a ​fantastic double episode​ with him) talked about why he doesn’t try to chase trends: “I love music that is outside of time. And one of the things about using organic instruments is, a piano a hundred years ago sounds like a piano today and it will sound like a piano in a hundred years. If you use the latest sounds, the newest sounds, the sounds of today—then tomorrow, they’ll sound like the sounds of yesterday…The newest of sounds can quickly sound very dated.”

– In a classic episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza has great success doing the opposite of what his instincts tell him to do. This is now known as The Costanza Principle, and it turns out to be scientifically-sound advice. The positive psychiatrist ​Dr. Samantha Boardman told me​, “There’s so much messaging today about how you always have to be yourself and trust your feelings. But I tell people, ‘be un-you.’ Like, what is the opposite of what you feel like doing right now? Or who is someone you really admire—what would they do in this moment? And I actually think that can get us closer to the versions of ourselves that we would like to be…Separating oneself from one’s impulse, taking a healthy step back and gaining some distance between what you feel like doing and what’s actually going to help you—you’ll make a better choice.”

– At the beginning of my interview (​you can listen here​) with the peerless Dr. Edith Eger—Holocaust survivor and the author of one of my favorite books, ​The Choice​—I asked her about something I regretted, a relationship I had messed up. She looked at me and said she could give me a gift that would solve that guilt right now. “I give you a sentence,” she said, “One sentence—if I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.” That’s the end of that, she said. “Guilt is in the past, and the one thing you cannot change is the past.”

– ​Matthew McConaughey told me​ why he shut down his production company and his music label. “I was making B’s in five things. I wanna make A’s in three things.” Those three things: his family, his foundation, his acting career.

– ​The great basketball coach Shaka Smart said​ something similar. He tells his players not to figure out their priorities, but to figure out their priority. “The root of the word ‘priority’ is singular… It was a singular word—the one thing. In modern times, we’ve turned it into ‘priorities,’ but then all of a sudden it turns into eight, ten, 15 things and that defeats the purpose.” Just do one high-quality thing every day, he said; it adds up.

– ​Another from McConaughey​. He told me he’s known in Hollywood as “a quick no and a long yes.” What a great expression! Before he says yes to doing a movie, he sleeps on it for ten days to two weeks in the frame of mind that he’s not going to do it. If he sleeps well, he doesn’t do it. If the thought that he has to do it wakes him up at night, he does it.

– Somewhat related: ​when I did Tom Segura’s podcast​, he told me he’s been trying to be a ‘long yes’ when it comes to buying stuff. “There’s a part of buying things that feels good. But I also feel like it’s sometimes good to deny yourself the thing you want in that moment. Instead of going, ‘I want this, I’m gonna get it right now,’ why don’t I give it a month and then be like, ‘do I still want that thing?’ or was that just a passing moment?”

– ​The legendary basketball coach George Raveling told me​ he sees reading as a moral imperative. “People died,” he said, speaking of slaves, soldiers, and civil rights activists, “so I could have the ability to read.” If you’re not reading, if books aren’t playing a major role in your life, you are betraying the legacy that they left for the generations after them.

– An essential piece of ​advice I got from the author Steven Pressfield​: There are professional habits and amateur ones. Which are you practicing? Is this a pro or an amateur move? Ask yourself that. Constantly.

– Somewhat related, the NASCAR driver and student of Stoicism, ​Brad Keselowski, talked about​ what distinguishes a professional in his field (and it applies to most fields). “If the conditions were always perfect, the average 12-year-old could do my job,” Brad said. “The problem is that those days are very seldom.” Can you still show up and perform when the conditions aren’t perfect? That’s the question.

– I was surprised to hear ​Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes​ say that she doesn’t miss or reminisce on being at the Olympics or standing on the podium. “When I dream about exciting moments and memories in my life, those don’t come up… It’s those moments with your family. It’s those moments with your spouse. It’s those moments knowing you planted an amazing positive seed in a stranger’s life. Those are the moments that fulfill us.”

– The great ​Sam Harris explained something similar​. He said it didn’t matter what peak experiences you’d had, what insights you’d been able to come up with while meditating, how enlightened you felt after all the years of practice and study. All that really counted, he said, was what you could muster in the course of ordinary, day-to-day life, or more specifically, in any one present moment.

– ​Austin Kleon​ talked about being a parent: “You have to be the kind of man that you want them to be. You have to become the kind of human being that you want them to become.” ​Marcus Aurelius​ was talking about being a human being: “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”

– ​Danica Patrick​ talked about the surreal reality that’s been her life as an international celebrity. “It made me realize that the stuff that we see—the celebrities, the magazines we pick up—we just think, ‘Oh, they’re famous.’ No, they’re being made famous. Somebody’s paying for that… So early on, I realized that there’s a lot of bullshit out there. And that there’s an agenda behind everything.” This is something I try to remember whenever I see someone getting attention and wonder, “Why am I not getting that?”

***

What I think is so incredible about podcasts is that other people may have listened to those same episodes and taken something totally different from them. In fact, I know they have because I’ve heard from them. But what gets me excited is thinking that across those hundreds of episodes and now cumulatively over 150M downloads (and many more views on video), that adds up to an unfathomable amount of wisdom that people have been able to add to their lives.

The line from Zeno was that we were given two ears and one mouth for a reason. That reason? To listen more than we talk.

To learn from people who can teach us. To find something that makes us better.

In 2015, my agent called me with an idea. I had published The Obstacle is the Way and was working on Ego is the Enemy, two books which were rooted in Stoic philosophy–but tried not to be too overt about it.

Steve, my agent, suggested I do the exact opposite. You should write a daily devotional about Stoicism, he told me, one page per day. It seemed crazy to me. Most people weren’t interested in philosophy (and most publishers weren’t either). Besides, I don’t speak Greek or Latin, so how would I do the translations? “I’ll do them,” Steve told me, “and I promise it will be your bestselling book.”

This was preposterous to me on many levels. For one, Steve knew Greek and Latin? But it turns out he did…and he was right!

The Daily Stoic released on this day seven years ago and has gone on to sell over 2M English language copies, and it’s been translated into more than 30 languages. Here on the 7th anniversary of The Daily Stoic, I thought I would share some lessons from that book–or rather, lessons that came from writing and publishing it, because the whole process taught me as much about business and life as it did about philosophy.

–Take the assignment. As I mentioned, the idea for The Daily Stoic wasn’t mine. In fact, I wasn’t totally convinced the idea would have much appeal, but I was at a point in my career where I was taking assignments. It seemed like a challenge. I felt like I would get better for trying. Plus Steve had far more experience in publishing than I did, so I trusted him. You just never know. Certainly, I have been surprised time and time again where little opportunities, little suggestions have changed the trajectory of my career. But only because I showed up and did the work.

–There is something powerful about the “daily read” format. Tolstoy believed his most essential work was not his novels but his daily read, A Calendar of Wisdom (it’s since become an absolute favorite of mine). As Tolstoy wrote in his diary, the continual study of one text, reading one page at the start of each day, is critical to personal growth. Steve had published The Daily Drucker (which is also great). I didn’t understand until later how perfect this format is for Stoicism. It’s not something you read once and ‘get.’ It’s a process. A ritual. I think everyone’s day should start with a daily read of some kind (The Daily Laws by Robert Greene is another I recommend).

–The work never stops. As I was writing the book, I got into it and decided I would just keep going. That’s what started the Daily Stoic newsletter. I’ve written and sent out a meditation on Stoicism every day since—I’d estimate that’s 750,000 words? Enough for seven more books. We’ve sent out just over 3,000 emails, which is just mind-blowing to me. The daily email continues to steadily grow, going out to over 760,000 people each day. And our open rate has basically been the same as when we started with just a few thousand subscribers in December 2016.

–Platforms are the priority. When Winston Churchill was driven from power, he could have wallowed. He could have retired. Instead, he became a one man media company. Between 1931 and 1939, Winston Churchill published 11 books, more than 400 articles, and delivered more than 350 speeches. He became more famous in the U.S. than he was in Britain. He cultivated power outside the system, delivered his message without intermediation. You could say they tried to cancel him, but it didn’t work. That’s what I’ve set up with The Daily Stoic. It’s not just an email list but also a YouTube Channel with 1.5M subscribers, an Instagram account with 2.7M followers, a Twitter account with 540K followers, a TikTok page with 655k followers, and a Facebook page with 861K followers. It’s Stoicism directly to the people.

–Give a lot of value away and capture a small percentage. I mentioned that we’ve essentially published seven books for free through the Daily Stoic email. On top of that, over the years, we’ve essentially created the largest Stoic library in the world. Hundreds of hours of video on the great Stoic works, the rules the Stoics lived by, Stoic habits, Stoic don’ts, and Stoic questions for a better life. Hundreds of thousands of words across articles on the Big 3 (Marucs Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus), timeless Stoic strategies for happiness, dealing with stress, getting and staying motivated, overcoming procrastination, and handling rude people. We’ve done something like 63 million views on YouTube (4.4 million hours watched). The podcast does around 5 million downloads a month (well over 150M lifetime downloads). The vast majority of people who have ever heard of or consumed anything from me, have done it for free. That’s absolutely cool with me. A very small percentage of people buy a book or a coin or whatever…my goal is to provide a lot of value to a lot of people and capture a tiny bit of it. That’s plenty for me.

–Use your success well. My friend Casey Neistat once said something to me. “You don’t make art to make money,” he said, “you make money to make more art.” As Daily Stoic has captured some of the value it has created, you know what I’ve done with that money? I’ve made more stuff! It’s allowed me to start the podcast, to hire a video editor, etc etc. I have a little note card next to my desk that says “Am I being a good steward of Stoicism?” By that I mean, am I using the success that this philosophy has brought me to introduce more people to the philosophy, or am I buying fancy cars with it? My goal has been to re-invest most of what I have gotten back into making and doing cool stuff. That’s a privilege, but also an obligation.

–Commitments/deadlines make you better. It might seem like a lot of work to write and put out an email every day for seven years…and it is! But it’s also one of my favorite things to do, and it has made me so much better. Committing to do this has been a forcing function to my productivity. We all need reps. If I only published books, I wouldn’t get nearly as many reps as I have gotten from publishing these daily emails–each one making me a little better at my craft. It’s also kept me active and in good shape. No resting on my laurels, no off season. Every day I have a show to put on.

–Meet people where they are. We know that people don’t necessarily wake up and think, ‘Today is the day I’m going to start looking into an ancient school of philosophy.’ In fact, that’s why I was skeptical about the book working in the first place. I say in the intro “Stoic philosophy” is not an appealing phrase in the English language. In order to make this all work, I’ve tried to never lose sight of that. I understand people are busy. I understand they’re not philosophy nerds. I try to meet them where they are. That means making stuff in lots of formats. That means giving stuff away for free. It also means trying to present what I know as solutions to their problems, trying to show how this philosophy helps them with their actual life.

–Think about how they’re interacting with what you do. Most books put the title on the top of every other page. For the second printing of The Daily Stoic, we put the title at the top of every page. We made that change because we realized people liked to take pictures or screenshots of that day’s page and share it…but then their friends had no idea what book it was from. Tolstoy didn’t have this issue/opportunity, but in the modern world we do.

–To everyone who hasn’t heard about you, you’re new. Even with the title at the top of every page, even though the book has been out for seven years, and even though it’s been read by millions—still, whenever we post a picture from the book on our own social accounts, people comment, what book is that from? It’s hard to remember when something is so familiar to you that it is still new to a lot of other people. I don’t expect people to have heard of me. I understand that the vast majority of people haven’t. I want to meet those new people.

–It takes time. Always remember that great things take time. They take longer than you think, even when you take that into account. The Daily Stoic took a while, years, even until it became a hit. I would walk into bookstores and they wouldn’t have it. The email list took years to reach what it is now. I’ve learned that patience is everything.

–Little things add up. Zeno said that greatness “is realized by small steps, but is truly no small thing.” Below is a look at some of the sales data for the hardcover and e-book in the U.S. You’ll notice that in most weeks it only sells a couple thousand copies and for many weeks at the beginning, it sold many fewer than that (those big spikes are the first week of January every year when we do a big discounted promo btw). But because I stuck with it, because the book was about something timeless, over the last seven years, those weekly sales have added up in a big way. Maybe other books sold more, faster, but I am confident that The Daily Stoic is going to keep going, like the tortoise, and in the end get very far.

Anyway, I can’t finish this piece without a note of gratitude. To Steve, who suggested the book and helped me write it. And to all of you who read it, watched one of the videos, forwarded one of the emails to a friend. As I said, I’ve gotten better for the opportunity (and privilege) to get to do this. Thank you!

For the most part, we can’t change the world. We can’t change the fundamental facts of existence–like the fact that we’re going to die. We can’t change other people.

Does that mean that everything is hopeless and permanently broken?

No, because although we have that extreme powerlessness in one sense, we have an incredible superpower in another: We can change how we think about things. We can change how we view them, how we orient ourselves to them.

That’s the essence of Stoicism, by the way. The idea that we don’t control what happens, but we do control ourselves. When we respond to what happens, the main thing we control is our mind and the story we tell ourselves.

So one way to think about Stoicism itself then is as a collection of mindset shifts for the many situations that life seems to thrust us in. Indeed, Seneca’s Letters, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, and Epictetus’ Discourses are filled with passages, anecdotes, and quotes which force a shift in perspective.

Here are 14 that I have taken from the Stoics over the years that have changed my life. I think they’ll do the same for you.

Everything is an opportunity for excellence. The now famous passage from Marcus Aurelius is that the impediment to action advances action, that what stands in the way becomes the way. But do you know what he was talking about specifically? He was talking about difficult people! He was saying that difficult people are an opportunity to practice excellence and virtue–be it forgiveness or patience or cheerfulness. And so it goes for all the things that are not in our control in life. So when I find myself in situations big and small, positive or negative, I try to see each of them as an opportunity for me to be the best I’m capable of being in that moment. It doesn’t matter who we are, where we are, we can always do this.

Every event has two handles, Epictetus said: “one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t. If your brother does you wrong, don’t grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other—that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries.” Another way to say that is that there are multiple ways to look at every situation, multiple ways to determine how you’re going to react. Some of them are sturdy and some of them are not. Some are kind and resilient, some are not. Which will you choose? Which handle will you grab?

The world is dyed by the color of your thoughts. Marcus said, “The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes the color of your thoughts.” He also said, “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” If you see the world as a negative, horrible place, you’re right. If you look for shittiness, you will see shittiness. If you believe that you were screwed, you’re right. But if you look for beauty in the mundane, you’ll see it. If you look for evidence of goodness in people, you’ll find it. If you decide to see the agency and power you do have over your life (which as we’ve said is largely in how we think), well, you’ll find you have quite a bit.

There is a tax on everything. Taxes aren’t just from the government. Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius, “All the things which cause complaint or dread are like the taxes of life—things from which, my dear Lucilius, you should never hope for exemption or seek escape.” Annoying people are a tax on being outside your house. Delays are a tax on travel. Haters are a tax on having a YouTube channel. There’s a tax on money too–and the more successful you are, the more you pay. Seneca said he tried to pay the taxes gladly. I love that. After all, it’s usually a sign of a good problem. It means you had a killer year financially. It means you’re alive and breathing. You can whine about the cost. Or you can pay and move on.

Poverty isn’t only having too little. Of course, not having what you need to survive is insufficient. But what about people who have a lot…but are insatiable? Who are plagued by envy and comparison? Both Marcus Aurelius and Seneca talk about rich people who are not content with what they have and are thus quite poor. But feeling like you have ‘enough’–that’s rich no matter what your income is.

Alive time or Dead time? This isn’t from the Stoics exactly, but close enough. Robert Greene once told me there were two types of time in life: Alive time and Dead time. One is when you sit around, when you wait until things happen to you. The other is when you are using that time productively, actively. You’re stuck at the airport–you don’t control that. You decide whether it’s alive time or dead time (you read a book, you take a walk, you call your grandmother). I had a year left on a job when Robert gave me that advice. I could have just sat on my hands. Instead, it was an incredibly productive period of reading and researching and filling boxes of notecards that helped me write The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy.

Anxiety isn’t escaped. It’s discarded. This was a breakthrough I had during the pandemic. Suddenly, I had a lot less to worry about. I wasn’t doing the things that, in the past, I told myself were the causes of my anxiety. I wasn’t having to get to a plane. I wasn’t battling traffic to get somewhere on time. I wasn’t having to prepare for this talk or that one. So you’d think that my anxiety would have gone way down. But it didn’t. And what I realized is that anxiety has nothing to do with any of these things. The airport isn’t the one to blame. I am! Marcus Aurelius actually talks about this in Meditations. “Today I escaped from anxiety,” he says. “Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.” It’s not your parents that are frustrating you. They’re just doing what they do. You are the source of the frustration. That’s a little frustrating, but it’s also freeing. Because it means you can stop it! You can choose to discard it.

It’s the surprise that kills you. Stuff is going to happen, but what makes it harder is when it catches us off guard. The unexpected blow lands heaviest, Seneca said. That’s why we should practice the art of *premeditatio malorum–*essentially, a pre-mortem of the things that could happen in a day or a life. This takes the sting out of them in advance…it also lets us prepare and prevent. And for no one is this more important than parents and leaders. Seneca said that the one thing a leader is not allowed to say is, “Wow, I didn’t think that was going to happen.”

You can’t learn what you think you already know. Conceit, Zeno said, was the enemy of wisdom and learning. This was the essential worldview of Socrates, the hero of the Stoics. Think of Socrates’ method. He didn’t go around telling people anything. He went around asking questions. That’s how he learned so much and ended up becoming so smart. If you want to get smarter, stop thinking you’re so smart. If you want to learn, focus on all the things you don’t know. Humility, admission of ignorance–these are the starting points. This is the attitude that gets you further in life.

What good is posthumous fame? Marcus Aurelius knew he was famous. He knew they were building statues of him. He knew he would have a legacy. He also knew this was basically worthless. What good is posthumous fame, he asks in Meditations, when you’re not around to enjoy it?! He reminded himself too that you know, it’s not like the people in the future were going to be way better than the people alive right now–there will be idiots in the future too. What do I care about how many people read my books in 100 years? What matters is if I am doing my best right now, if I am taking pleasure and pride from doing my best right now. So stop trying to live forever by achieving all this greatness, stop trying to get more than you need, stop trying to perform for history. Do the good you can do now. Stop chasing something you will never touch. Legacy is not for you. You’ll be dead. Leave it to others.

People are just doing their job. I don’t just mean at work. After bumping into a particularly frustrating person, Marcus Aurelius asks himself, “Is a world without shamelessness possible?” No, he answers. “There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them.” This is just someone fulfilling their role. Seeing things this way not only prevents me from being surprised, but it makes me sympathetic. This person has a crappy job. It’s not fun to be them–they have to be one of the jerks that exist in the world. And then I remind myself that I am lucky that my job is to try to be a good person.

They don’t want you to be miserable. It’s strange that Stoics have the reputation for being unfeeling when Seneca wrote three very beautiful essays on loss and grief called Consolations. I read these essays whenever I lose someone or miss someone who I loved. Anyway, one of the lessons that hit me the most is when he is writing to the daughter of a now-deceased friend. He brings up a great point, basically saying, look, your dad loved you so much. Of course, he would be honored that you miss him, but do you think he would want his death to make you miserable? Would he want the mere mention of his name to bring you pain? No, that would be his worst nightmare. He would want you to be happy. He would want you to go on with your life. He wouldn’t want his memory to haunt you like a ghost–he would want the thought of him to bring you joy and happiness. Of course, we’re always going to feel sad when we lose someone, but then we can remind ourselves of this and try to smile too.

Opinions are optional. “Remember, you always have the power to have no opinion,” Marcus says. Do you need to have an opinion about the weather today–is it changing anything? Do you need to have an opinion about the way your kid does their hair? So what if this person likes music that sounds weird to you? So what if that person is a vegetarian? “These things are not asking to be judged by you,” Marcus writes. “Leave them alone.” Especially because these opinions often make us miserable! “It’s not things that upset us,” Epictetus says, “it’s our opinions about things.” The less opinions you have, especially about other people and things outside your control, the happier you will be. The nicer you’ll be to be around too.

__

The last one is the most powerful one, I think. And it’s about the thing we have the least amount of power and control over: the fact that we’re all going to die.

But the Stoics want us to think about it differently…

Death isn’t in the future. It’s happening now. It’s easy to see death as this thing that lies off in the distant future. It’s a fixed event that happens to us once…at the end. This is literally true but it’s also incorrect. “This is our big mistake,” as Seneca points out, “to think we look forward toward death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.”

It’s better to think of death as a process—something that is always happening. We are dying every day, he said. Even as you read this email, time is passing that you will never get back. That time, he said, belongs to death. Powerful, right? Death doesn’t lie off in the distance. It’s with us right now. It’s the second hand on the clock. It’s the setting sun. As the arrow of time moves, death follows, claiming every moment that has passed. What ought we do about it? The answer is live. Live while you can. Put nothing off. Leave nothing unfinished. Seize it while it still belongs to us.