The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

Control your perceptions. Direct your actions properly. Willingly accept what’s outside your control.

What is he incapable, then, of chaining up or cutting off? Your power of choice. It was for that reason that the ancients urged us to follow this precept: Know yourself. [18] So what follows? That we should practise, by heaven, with little things, and after beginning with those, pass on to greater things.

You can take the trouble you’re dealing with and use it as an opportunity to focus on the present moment. To ignore the totality of your situation and learn to be content with what happens, as it happens. To have no “way” that the future needs to be to confirm your predictions, because you didn’t make any. To let each new moment be a refresh wiping

There comes a moment in life, often in the quietest of hours, when one realizes that the world will continue on its wayward course, indifferent to our desires or frustrations. And it is then, perhaps, that a subtle truth begins to emerge: the only thing we truly possess, the only thing we might, with enough care, exert some mastery over, is our min