Meditations on Self-Discipline and Failure: Stoic Exercise for Mental Fitness

Do not invest time and emotional energy imagining calamities that might befall you or your family and friends. Be aware of the possibilities, prepare as best as you are able to avoid needless suffering, loss of life, financial disaster, and the like and, certainly, learn how to respond rationally and efficiently should the need arise. Do not, howev

Just about anything could go wrong. It is unwise and wasteful to conflate the merely possible with the probable—or the inevitable.

Live one day in nobility, and you will have accomplished more than ten thousand lives of desperate, quarrelsome, hapless commoners.

Secondarily, you must resist the temptation to become frustrated with the stupid, the liars, and the corrupt. This is, perhaps, your greatest challenge. Let them degrade themselves, but do not degrade yourself because of them. Their character is their punishment. It is not your concern.

Sincere repudiation requires sufficient comprehension of that which you repudiate to provide justification should your opposition face challenge or scrutiny.

Spend neither time nor energy debating your detractors.

The only real failure is insufficient self-discipline or inadequate effort aimed at self-improvement.

Never underestimate the value of careful observation. You will learn more by watching, listening, and experiencing the outer and inner worlds with a clear mind than you will ever learn by talking, or by trying to demonstrate your intellectual prowess to others.

The length of your life is not nearly as important as the quality of the person living it. Far better for you that you should live a shorter, but nobler life, than that you should continue in malingering mediocrity.