Techniques

Before the day begins, name the kinds of people you will meet, the disruptions that might arrive, and the disposition you mean to bring — so that the day finds you ready.

Strip the impression of its aesthetic and rhetorical wrapping. Describe the thing as it is, not as your appetite or vanity has dressed it.

The continuous, vigilant attention to what is happening in your own mind — catching impressions before they become judgments, and judgments before they become passions.

Sort the situation into what is up to you and what is not — and direct effort and concern only to the first column.

Before sleep, interrogate the day with Sextius's three questions — what bad habit have you cured, what vice have you checked, in what respect are you better.

Hold the fact of your death close enough that today is ordered by what would matter if it were the last — and far enough that it does not become its own kind of morbidity.

Rehearse, in detail, what might realistically go wrong — so that fortune cannot ambush you and your equanimity is not dependent on things going your way.

Rise above the present scene in imagination — across rooms, cities, continents, ages — until the disturbance is restored to its proportionate scale.

Choose, periodically, the harder version — cold, hunger, plainness, silence — so that the easier version stops being load-bearing for your wellbeing.

Before acting, hold in mind a person of practical wisdom — historical, fictional, or composite — and ask what they would do here.

Form every intention with the implicit qualifier "circumstances permitting" — committing to the action wholly, but never staking your equanimity on the result.