Concentrate every minute… on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions.
Yes, you can— if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.
You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life?
Date Recorded: 11/18/2023
…then don't make room for anything … that might lead you astray, tempt you off the road, and leave you unable to devote yourself completely to achieving the goodness that is uniquely yours. It would be wrong for anything to stand between you and attaining goodness…
Date Recorded: 11/25/2023
If you do the job in a principled way, with diligence, energy and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment–
If you can embrace this without fear or expectation–can find fulfillment in what you’re doing now, as Nature intended, and in superhuman truthfulness (every word, every utterance)–then your life will be happy.
No one can prevent that.
Date Recorded: 12/4/2023
To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God—saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness—he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.
Date Recorded: 12/12/2023
The tranquility that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do.
Date Recorded: 12/26/2023
If you seek tranquility, do less. Or (more accurately) do what’s essential — what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better.
Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, "Is this necessary?"
Date Recorded: 1/9/2024
A key point to bear in mind: The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.
Date Recorded: 1/11/2024
Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human — however imperfectly — and fully embrace the pursuit that you’ve embarked on.
Date Recorded: 2/1/2024
When you deal with irrational animals, with things and circumstances, be generous and straightforward. You are rational; they are not. When you deal with fellow human beings, behave as one.
Date Recorded: 3/28/2024
Remember — your responsibilities can be broken down into individual parts as well. Concentrate on those, and finish the job methodically — without getting stirred up or meeting anger with anger.
Date Recorded: 4/12/2024
The things ordained for you – teach yourself to be at one with those. And to the people who share them with you – treat them with love. With real love.
Date Recorded: 4/23/2024
All of us are working on the same project. Some consciously, with understanding; some without knowing it.
...Some of us work in one way, and some in others. And those who complain and try to obstruct and thwart things - they help as much as anyone. The world needs them as well.
So make up your mind who you'll choose to work with. The force that directs all things will make good use of you regardless - will put you on its payroll and put you to work.
Date Recorded: 5/7/2024
Focus on what is said when you speak and on what results from each action. Know what the one aims at, and what the other means.
Date Recorded: 5/28/2024
Treat what you don’t have as nonexistent. Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you’d crave them if you didn’t have them. But be careful. Don’t feel such satisfaction that you start to overvalue them — that it would upset you to lose them.
Date Recorded: 6/18/2024
Wash yourself clean. With simplicity, with humility, with indifference to everything but right and wrong.
Care for other human beings. Follow God.
Date Recorded: 6/20/2024
Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option:
Date Recorded: 6/27/2024
For times when you feel pain:
See that it doesn’t disgrace you, or degrade your intelligence — doesn’t keep it from acting rationally or unselfishly.
And in most cases what Epicurus said should help: that pain is neither unbearable nor unending, as long as you keep in mind its limits and don’t magnify them in your imagination.
Date Recorded: 7/23/2024
Nature did not blend things so inextricably that you can't draw your own boundaries — place your own well-being in your own hands. It's quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it. Remember that.
Date Recorded: 7/30/2024
Perfection of character: to live your last day, every day, without frenzy, or sloth, or pretense.
Date Recorded: 8/8/2024
The first step: Don’t be anxious. Nature controls it all.
The second step: Concentrate on what you have to do. Fix your eyes on it. Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy.
Date Recorded: 9/16/2024
And progress for a rational mind means not accepting falsehood or uncertainty in its perceptions, making unselfish actions its only aim, seeking and shunning only the things it has control over, embracing what nature demands of it — the nature in which it participates, as the leaf’s nature does in the tree’s.
Date Recorded: 10/22/2024