The consultant eventually spoke after pretending not to see me. And where exactly were you this morning? he asked. A tamponade of tension made the theatre go quiet- the scrub nurse pretended to count swabs, the resident was suddenly fascinated by the monitor. I had told him. I had told the anesthetist, the nurse, even texted him on WhatsApp; I had gone to watch the ex-laparotomy because he himself, last week, had said go and see things. None of that mattered now. Worse, he didn’t believe me. My voice cracked and became faint mid-sentence as I tried to defend myself. And underneath that my fury grew, dawning on me that whatever respect I had for this man was gathering its coat and leaving the room.

Incidences like these can be disheartening- especially from someone whose work you admire. So how do you survive- or even thrive through it all?

There is, it turns out, one possession the world cannot tax, the weather cannot ruin, and fortune cannot repossess- and yet most people leave unattended. Your mind. The one instrument through which every sunset, every first kiss, every funeral and Friday night is filtered. A lot of pain and misery come from its neglect. Milton saw this clearly, as he talks about in Paradise Lost- the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.

So how do you tend the thing? You begin by deciding what gets in your scope of attention. You become ruthless about your company, about the content you consume, about food, about the small sips of conversation you take throughout the day- because the mind absorbs its surroundings the way a sponge takes on the color of whatever water it sits in. Marcus said the soul becomes dyed the color of your thoughts. Open the social app first thing in the morning, and you’ve already poisoned your mind with the tawdry opinions of strangers. Fill the day instead with a good book on the nightstand, a friend who wants to connect with you, good vibes, a walk without earphones, and something remarkable happens- you begin to move through your days with a tranquility other people can’t imagine. Epictetus called this prosoche- attention, vigilance, the unbroken practice of watching what enters your mind and what takes root. He was a slave when he learned it. You, presumably, have fewer excuses.

You tend it, too, by refusing to sell yourself cheaply. You stop rewriting the message three times because you’re afraid of how it’ll sound. You stop checking, for the nth time, who viewed your story. You stop bartering small pieces of your peace and integrity for the brittle thrill of being thought well of by people whose taste you wouldn’t trust on a restaurant recommendation. You let others have their flimsy opinions, and you keep your composure. Marcus Aurelius- emperor of Rome, master of the known world, a man who could have retreated to any villa on the Mediterranean- wrote that the truest retreat is the one you take into yourself. The work, then, is to make yourself somewhere worth retreating to. To put a cool art of thoughts on your mental.

You direct your attention toward what’s yours to do, towards what’s possible- the email you’ve been avoiding, the call to your mother, the work you keep promising yourself you’ll start on Monday. You exercise, because a sluggish body drags the mind down like a stone in a sock. You sleep, because no philosophy survives sleep deprivation, and Seneca was right that the worst diseases are the ones we inflict on ourselves through our habits. You read. You write. You meditate. You sit in silence long enough to generate a genuine thought- which, in a century engineered to prevent it, is closer to revolutionary than anyone admits.

There’s a discipline here that sounds strict but is actually the most generous gift you can give yourself. You stop reacting to every provocative thing said in your direction. You stop trying to control what was never yours to control. You learn that everything outside you is in constant flux, subject to fortune, but how you see, how you interpret, how you act- that’s yours. Always yours. The whole of Stoicism, in a way, is a long meditation on that single sentence.

The beautiful thing is that the mind you’ve been tending to begins, after a while, to take good care of you. It steers you through fear before the difficult conversation. It earns your living. It sees through the manipulation you would have once walked straight into. It finds you the right sentence, the resilience in the bleakest of midwinters, the right next step. You start to feel lively in a way you had nearly forgotten was possible- the way you felt as a child on the last day of school.

So care for your mind. Value it above nearly everything. Treat it as the rare and irreplaceable instrument it is- because it’s the only one standing between you and the monsters of the world. Between you and happiness.

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I was 72 hours deep into this challenge my best friend gave me.

Or it was the 80th hour.

I can’t remember.

My vision was hazy. The thoughts to quit had gotten louder. I sniffed defeat.

I was unsure about partaking in the dare from the outset, as I didn’t see any value in it. Therefore, I didn’t train as well as he did.

I also foreshadowed I’d be inefficient with my daily tasks while fighting the temptation to break the fast. And I knew better than to fight many battles simultaneously. That’s the economy of war.

I had it all figured out with excuses.

Channeling the trickery of Odysseus, he asked me whether I had heard of Seneca’s words saying,

“I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”

A little perturbed, I said I did and I was living that philosophy in other ways. But missing food for 120 hours without any reward was crazy.

“You’re crazy.”

I told him.

9th February, the challenge day, arrived faster than I expected.

Interestingly, as if I had taken on the fast unconsciously, I got so busy I forgot to eat. I was also too lazy to cook that day.

In the calm, youthful evening, as I gazed at the beautiful twilight, staying strong while getting smacked by the aroma and sizzle of fried meat from my neighbor’s house, I convinced myself to go on.

I called my friend and told him I would be participating. We’re on.

I started the clock.

I decided to be strategic with my approach by not letting the weight of the whole event crush me. I’d take it a day at a time. A moment at a time. Breathe at a time.

“Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole,”

Marcus Aurelius would tell himself,

“Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, “Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?” You’ll be embarrassed to answer.”

Day one was easy. Day two, peasy. Hunger was non-existent. I was also enjoying the endorphin high.

My energy was steady throughout those days as I was sharp in the lengthy hospital ward rounds and my productivity was at an all-time high. The momentum was exciting. And I knew I had this challenge by the chokehold. What’s the worst that could happen?

Yo! I had spoken too soon. Day three got interesting.

It was when I felt the heaviness of what I had gotten myself into because, dear reader, part of the challenge was that we still had to lift at the gym and work.

Fatigue had encapsulated my being when I woke up. I thought it would fade on my way to the gym, but its adhesiveness was stubborn. The warm up was a struggle. Setting up the weights was a chore. I felt miserable.

It was apparent...I was down bad. Like Ken Carson, I was

“fighting my demons.”

I wanted to go back to sleep.

My friend pointed out that he could see me going through it. He laughed. Called me a wuss—hoping it would trigger some anger and ketosis.

I laughed back at myself in agony.

I thought. Do I go on and experience what it feels to win, or break the fast because this was not looking good? I was at crossroads. And I had to make a choice. Fast.

Suddenly, it hit me that I didn’t control how I felt. The gloom and decline in energy was an inevitable physiological phenomenon resulting from the fast. And in wishing this state away, I was focusing on the wrong thing. I was trying to change the impossible.

My best bet for survival was guiding my attention and effort on what I did control: my response.

I decided to love and get comfortable with what I felt. Being a rebel, that was the most audacious and atrocious thing I would do to spite this obstacle. It was a chance for me to practice courage and confidence. To hold my head up high, and shake off the torment like it was nothing.

This act renewed my energy.

And the results came in the second set of the bench press when it got easy. I even told my friend to help me add more weight for the third set.

He smiled knowing we were about to destroy this session. With a smirk, and like a shark tasting blood, I knew I was back.

How could I not be proud? The day was young and I had conquered the worst. Part of me even wished it would happen again so I could feel myself overcome. It was beautiful.

When Future said,

“I’m at a stage in my life where I feel like I can conquer anything and everything,”

in the intro of Diamond’s Dancing, I felt that.

The rest of the 120-hour fast felt good and simple.

And at the end of it, as I ate some eggs to break my fast while playing some Lana Del Rey in the background, reminiscing about the hell I just went through — I felt I had earned more audacity and drive to do whatever I wanted.

With courage, confidence, and more love, this event had fundamentally changed me. I felt invincible, that nothing could hurt me.

The challenge also helped me see the essence of a strong brotherhood.

Had my friend not been noble enough to want to challenge himself. Had he pitied and implored me to go back to sleep, I wouldn’t have felt what I did — which was better than any material reward.

It was...a spiritual experience. Priceless. An illuminating event I knew I’d draw on for much needed strength on a dark day.

“It’s time you realized,”

Marcus Aurelius wrote,

“that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.”

And below is a breakdown of lessons you can draw from this story which will help you endure and make the most of the pain and pressure you could be going through or will experience in the future.

1. Seek Refuge in Your Inner Citadel

Nothing can get to you. Not pain. Not endless temptations and distractions. And not the words of rude people.

At the same time, you can’t help but feel the initial eruptions of what has happened. This sting is inevitable. You’re human. But because you have the powers of Reason, you can stop the emotions where they stand.

You can be free.

And this is how you gain mind control.

Ancient Stoics classified matters into what’s within our control and what isn’t. The former should be your major concern since it holds the keys to your well-being and you ought to ignore the latter.

Among the things within your control are your thoughts, judgments and opinions and those not within your control are the weather, what people say and do, and if your business will thrive or fail.

Further still, among the things not within your control, there are some you can have a degree of influence on the outcome while others are fixed.

For example, your business has a high potential to thrive if you work hard and tap into the right market while you can’t do anything to influence the weather however much you pray.

It’s because of separating matters, or lack thereof, between what you control and what you don’t that people have different reactions to the same situation.

Think of this story about Seneca who, when young, used to get asthma attacks that almost left him for dead.

Do you know what he did?

Gasping for breath on his bed, he fully embraced the asthma attack and even wished for death itself, if that was destined to happen.

Crazy, right? I know.

But through rational surrender to what fate had imposed on him, he got the upper hand and emerged from the experience stronger than ever having overcome the fear of death.

You control what you think of situations and you can as well write the coolest story ever in the book of your life.

2. Distract Yourself

People will tell you it’s good to pay attention to what you’re doing if you want to get the most from it.

Being good at your craft, social interactions and enjoying your food requires you pay attention to what’s happening for you to create meaningful connections and enjoy these moments.

However, doing this all the time can be counterproductive.

There are some fears or pains you can’t overcome however effortful and deliberate you are to focus on the moment. And it’s during these trying times that it’s wise to stop trying and take advantage of your nature as it already is since when left to ourselves, as Montaigne learnt,

“Our thoughts are always elsewhere.”

It’s prudent to distract yourself from painful thoughts with other interesting activities.

You can rely on nature to take care of you rather than throw your intellectual axe at a problem you can never hope to crack. You can let go and live in the flow.

This helps whether you’re grieving or if fear threatens to paralyze you.

3. Love the Struggle. It’ll Make You Better

“I love to feel a bitter throe, 

 Rise to its fullest height,

 Then watch a conquering anodyne

 Softly assert its might.”

   - Anne Reeve

You might think it’s absurd, but yes, the struggle will make you a better and stronger person.

And perhaps the greatest benefit will be enhancing your empathy.

When you experience deep pain, you don’t have a choice but to put yourself in other people’s shoes and wonder what they’re going or went through and be compassionate and kind enough to them to ease their torment so you can pacify your pain.

Opening yourself up to empathy is what makes you want to call your mother and tell her you love her, since you now understand the perils of adulthood aren’t as easy as she had protected you from. Not to feel sorry for her, as that would be insulting her strength and dignity, but to draw inspiration from her since you’re cut from the same cloth.

If she survived and thrived through the pain, you can do it too.

You may not need the struggle to make you a kinder, more loving person, but some of us need the shock that we’re not at the centre of the universe and this forces us to consider other perspectives through empathy and connection with people on a much deeper level since we’ve discovered that we’re still human, prone to the same sufferings we had previously considered ourselves immune to.

And through this communal bond of being and suffering, we get to exercise other noble aspects of our nature such as love, active listening, and even assertiveness.

This openness to the world is also what helps us create the best businesses, lasting relationships, and beautiful art or entertainment as it speaks to the natural human condition.

Other times, it’s not until you’re forced into responsibility that you discover your agency. You realize you can pick up a book or Google solutions to a problem, learn a skill, and talk to people to ask for help. Or simply practice patient endurance.

It’s for this reason that most people become better when you put them in charge of a group and expect results from them. Or if they become parents.

Far away from the comfortable beach, you have no other choice but to swim.

So, embrace the struggle.

That might not be what you want to hear since you wish for life to keep getting better and you’re probably already tired. But you’ll be more at ease once you understand living requires strength, since your responsibilities and expectations will continue expanding with age.

Life doesn’t get better; you get stronger.

And when you soak up that truth, you’ll be happy to know that you’re building up strength and endurance for the future through what’s happening right now.

That it’s all practice. For, as Marcus Aurelius wrote,

“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

4. Train For the Hard Times

From the story above, it’s clear that I should have trained for the long fast.

But what I haven’t told you is I usually eat once a day on most days. This practice contributed to my resilience for that challenge.

I had benefited from Seneca’s teachings saying,

…we should voluntarily set aside a few days to subsist with little food, coarse clothing & no material comforts. We should prepare for adversity, amidst the favours of fortune. Such practices of endurance will help us realise we can make do with very little. Vagaries of fortune won’t effect us.

Recent studies in Neuroscience confirm what Seneca quipped 2,000 years ago.

Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist from Stanford University, tells us that the anterior mid-cingulate cortex is the source of our will-power.

This brain area grows bigger when, at our worst — tired and wanting to quit, we need to express more discipline.

That adaptation then helps us be more disciplined in other areas of life that might require it. It also helps you see that you can train to increase your will power; it’s not a limited resource as many people tend to believe. And if you can take this idea further, you might see the wisdom in doing challenging tasks often so you can play daily life on easy mode.

You’re capable of so much more than you think, dear reader. You can do this. Take it a step at a time and give yourself some grace.

The opposite also applies.

The more you avoid doing hard things, the more you lose your will power. You become soft.

Now you can be grateful for and love what you’re going through as it’s building up the strength reserve you might need in the future.

It’s helping you get stronger to handle the heavy crown you were destined to wear.

So when trouble comes, think of yourself as a wrestler whom God, like a trainer, has paired with a tough young buck. For what purpose? To turn you into Olympic-class material.” — Epictetus

There are various ways to simulate adversity so you can cultivate this capacity.

Exercise, fasting, not picking up your phone when doing deep work, sleeping on the floor, writing, or reading are all ways you can do so.

You’ll also be happy to note that even small activities like cold showers, as long as you don’t enjoy them — Huberman says, could go a long way into boosting your resilience.

It’s time you took back control and ruled your mind. Don’t you think?

And while you’re at it, remember this encouragement from Epictetus,

“every habit and capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions.”

Prepare for life. It’s a long journey ahead.

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Dear reader, I want you to listen carefully. You can let the past go. Right now, in this sentence, before you finish your coffee. You can just decide to be a better person. You can wake up today and refuse to repeat the same patterns you picked up in childhood- thoughts and actions that lower your self-esteem, make you paranoid about what others think, and push you into habits that chip away at your self-respect or sabotage your potential. You can stop letting anxious or depressive thoughts ruin your day before it even begins. Just as Marcus Aurelius discovered in himself,

You can decide to carry yourself like someone consequential, a legitimate child of the universe. Like someone building something no one else can see yet- but soon will. Like someone chosen- because you are. You can stand taller, speak with more gravitas, dress better, and act as if you were meant to contribute something useful in the world. You can act like someone who expects respect. You can choose to be more assertive without cruelty, more sociable without servility, more magnetic without trying. To stop playing small. You can absorb the traits of those you admire- their virtues, speech patterns, mannerisms- even when they threaten your ego, especially when they threaten your ego. Learn what they do right. Take what serves you. Leave the rest. Because those traits might be the very things that raise your survival odds, help you master your craft and cement your place in the world. That way of being is yours to claim. No one, except maybe you and the insecure ones, can scold you for embodying who you were born to be.

But none of this works without awareness. We can’t remodel what we haven’t seen. You must learn to study yourself from a distance- how you act, speak, react, diminish yourself, the excuses you give- so that change becomes possible.

Still, there will be moments when reality hits you sideways. It won’t match the self-image you’re building. You’ll feel like an imposter. You’ll want to revert to the older version of yourself- the smaller, more familiar self. Or perhaps you’ll do so well, but since the good you’re experiencing is alien, you’ll desire to go back to your trashy life because at least you’re comfortable there. That temptation will be strong.

But this is where you double down on your convictions about eminence. This is when you remember that every great man has gone through this same stretch of doubt and disorientation. It’s part of an illustrious life. And the point is to stand firm. Not to feel good at every step. To adapt, yes- but never surrender your purpose and values. Like the rock Marcus Aurelius described- battered by waves, unmoved in essence. Life will do what it does. It hits everyone- struggling or not. But only a few make it through with grace, with their principles intact. Only a certain type of man wins: the one who applies himself where he has control and refuses to waste energy on the rest.

The discomfort and temptations that rattle you today aren’t infinite. They come in waves. They follow a patterns, the gaussian curve. They rise. They crest. Then they fall away. Marcus knew this too- that’s why he reminded himself to mark out their limits and not get overwhelmed. That’s strategy. That’s power. Meet distress like a strategist. Train for it. Anticipate the wave, and when it comes, practice your algorithm- This is nothing. I’ve seen this before. It won’t matter in a few hours, a few weeks. I’ll stay strong. I’ll be better after it. I’ll resist today, then again tomorrow.

And one day soon, you’ll say, “I just decided to stop this- and I actually did.” Or, “I decided to keep going despite the fear & discomfort, and now look at me man… I have more power, peace, wealth, confidence and happiness than I could ever dream of. I believe I can figure out anything.”

That moment will change everything. Because now you know you are who you say you are. When you say something, you do it. When you declare power, health, mental clarity and strength are important, you go for them. When you decide you love yourself and are worthy of respect, your actions propound to echo that truth. You can rely on yourself under pressure, in the ebb and flow of life. More people trust you. And there’s an enduring joy and pride in that.

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Think of your mind as the Wand of Hermes, a symbol of transformation representing the ability to unite opposing forces, e.g., order and chaos, to create inner balance and achieve spiritual or material change, and nothing will ever be bad to you. Why? Because no matter what happens, you’ll find a way to turn it into an advantage.

Lost your job? Great. Now you have the chance to start over—get a better paying job in a good culture or maybe get the fire, focus and time to start your own business. No more answering to people who don’t see your value. No more doing what you don’t like.

Going through a breakup? Good. That relationship was probably holding you back in ways you didn’t even realize. Now you can meet someone who actually fits your life and appreciates you. Now you can learn to express the love overflowing inside you toward the whole of life, to art, to strangers, to work, to family, to nature — see them with fresh, caring and desirous eyes as you did your lover. Or use this time to focus on yourself, love yourself, become someone you hold in high esteem.

Feeling overwhelmed by work, kids, or customers? Perfect. This is how you get more intense and deliberate with your work because now you have deadlines, cut out the pesky distractions, get better at time management and focus, learn patience, refine your leadership skills, and practice handling pressure like it’s nothing. The more you practice, the better you become and the easier it gets.

Flight got canceled? No problem. Use the extra time to explore your local city, connect with the strangers you meet, work on your project, read a book, or finally relax without a packed schedule.

Too much coursework? Good. You’re developing will power, a mental library of valuable foundational knowledge, and cognitive skills that’ll give you more leverage and make everything else in your career feel easier. If you handle this, you’ll be sure you can handle anything within your power that comes later or smoothen the process of acquiring new skills.

Low on cash? Perfect. Time to learn how to get by with less and limit your desires to only what you need to be happy, learn new and in-demand skills that’ll set you up financially, know where your friends’ loyalty lie now that there’s no incentive & be grateful for the little you get and what you have — the gift of life.

Every setback is a setup. Every problem is an opportunity. Train yourself to see it this way, and you’ll finally get the confidence and clarity to see life as Marcus Aurelius did,

“That every event is the right one. Look closely and you’ll see. Not just the right one overall, but right. As if someone had weighed it out with scales. Keep looking closely like that, and embody it in your actions.”

You’ll also enjoy this one,

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There are often days when life is just not so fun. Days when effort feels too much- yet not enough, when plans fail, when disappointment invades your heart and you feel that none of this is worth sustaining, that none of what you like is worth doing anymore. In these moments, it’s easy to believe you’ve lost your way, that perhaps you’ve become weak. But what rescues you is not a new worldview or a sudden revelation. It’s sober existence and returning. Returning to what works and has been working for millenia. The basics. The steady harmony of rational conduct.

Marcus Aurelius found a way to remind himself of this concept. He wrote,

This is where Albert Camus becomes useful. When you reach the edge of despair, as he wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus, he doesn’t ask you to lie to yourself or hope blindly. He asks you to stay awake. To refuse both delusion and surrender. To live in full awareness of difficulty and still choose engagement. This refusal is intimate- you’ll feel it in how it expands your consciousness- and it must become a daily thing you do. You wake up. You act. You do what you must do even if you don’t feel like it. For when life reveals its absurdity, the task is not to deny it or explain it away. Your chief task is to stay awake inside it. To refuse despair without pretending everything makes sense.

You experience this rebellion most clearly where you have to expend more effort just when you think you’re done for the day. When a project ends. When progress resets. When you wake up to go at the day again. When the rock rolls back down and you have to walk after it. That stark walk to start again matters. It’s there that you see the full extent of your condition, and it’s there that you recover ownership of it. The burden hasn’t disappeared, but it belongs to you now. You carry it consciously. You choose to engage again- on your terms. This choice is where your dignity lives.

Because the truth is this- pain doesn’t mean you’re failing. You’re just alive inside a demanding life. The ups and downs you resent are not signs of disorder or preconditions to failure. They’re the conditions under which a meaningful life is built. There’s still work to do. There are still dreams asking for your patience. There’s still a life waiting for your participation, even when your enthusiasm runs thin. What sustains you then is not intensity, but harmony. A stable inner beat whose melody carries you from one obligation to the next with dignity, grace, restraint, and self-respect.

You return by simplifying. You stop arguing with what happened and start asking how to meet it well. You handle one thing at a time without thinking too much about the future.

You treat each interruption as something workable, something that can strengthen rather than dismantle you if handled with care and finesse. Because anger promises release, but it takes more than it gives. Complaint feels honest, but it diminishes your authority over time. So you choose a harder truth. You acknowledge how much it hurts, how much it’s not right to suffer this much, and you stay upright anyway.

You remember that your energy, even when restless or nil, is still yours to direct. You don’t need to extinguish it or indulge the void. You guide it. You cultivate it. And this choice, slowly centers you. You begin to ask better questions again. What strengthens me. What calms me down. What brings me joy? What will matter a year from now. How can I build a life that harmonizes all that? Am I willing to endure the suffering for it? These questions bring you back into alignment.

Harmony, then, transcends your mood. Because it’s fidelity. Fidelity to a rational life. Fidelity to who you are. Fidelity to the kind of person you decided to be and the life you wanted to live before life tested that decision. You return to the basics again and again because they don’t depend on conditions and feelings. You act with care. You improve by iteration. You keep going with your awareness intact. Without turning whatever you’re going through into something, without catastrophizing… just enduring. Just gracefully enduring.

So ask yourself, how can I stop complaining about what I’m going through right now?

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You trust your own mind too readily. That first flare of anger, that snap verdict on someone’s intentions, that impulse to abandon the work when it gets crazy- you accept it all unquestioned, as though your reactions arrived pre-certified. They didn’t. Most of what courses through your head is unaudited, and unaudited thoughts will ruin your life faster than any adversary ever could.

Epictetus had a word for the remedy: prosoche- a vigilant, sustained attention to your own judgments. A disciplined intermission at the gates of your mind. A customs inspection on every impression before you grant it entry and let it ruin your mood. Marcus Aurelius cultivated the same practice. Whenever an impression struck, he would ask- what is this thing in itself? Peel away the theatrics, the narrative you’re already selling yourself, the catastrophe you’ve already rehearsed in the shower. What’s actually before you? Almost always something far more navigable than the version your emotions assembled in the thirty seconds since you glanced at that text message.

Because your emotions are swift. Swifter than your judgment. Seneca observed this- he called them ‘first movements,’ those involuntary surges of dread or fury that arrive before reason even clocks in for the day. You cannot intercept them. The jolt when your boss murmurs ‘we need to talk.’ The heat blooming through your chest when someone cuts you off in traffic. The tightening in your stomach when a friend leaves you on read for two days. Those are reflexes. But what follows- the second movement, where you seize that feeling and construct an entire prosecution around it, assign motive, draft closing arguments, deliver the verdict before the accused has even spoken- that part is up to you.

And when you choose recklessly, the wreckage compounds. Shakespeare’s Othello is a decorated general, profoundly devoted to his wife Desdemona, whose entire world is dismantled by a single poisoned rumour. His envoy Iago tells him she has been unfaithful, plants just enough fabricated evidence to let Othello’s jealousy do the rest- and it devours him. He never confronts Desdemona. Never pauses. Never holds the impression up for scrutiny. He trusts the hearsay over the woman beside him and strangles her in their bed. She was innocent. Every shred of proof was manufactured. And by the time he discovers this truth, she’s already gone. That’s what happens when you surrender the reins to an unverified story. You annihilate what you cherish in the name of protecting it.

You’ve enacted smaller versions of this. We all have. You’ve lashed out at someone you treasure because you were already three arguments deep into a confrontation that existed only in your head. You’ve spiralled past midnight, dissecting a colleague’s tone in a meeting, convinced it meant more than it probably ever did. You’ve mistaken frustration for failure and abandoned endeavours that simply needed another week of patience, because the discomfort felt like a life sentence when it was merely the texture of becoming- how you get stronger.

Viktor Frankl endured Auschwitz and returned with one of the most indispensable observations ever committed to language- between stimulus and response, there’s a space, and within that space lives your freedom. That space is prosoche. That space is where you cease being a passenger in your own reactions and begin steering. You learn to sit with the impression for a beat. You interrogate whether the anger is shielding something genuine or merely defending your ego. You extend generosity to people and, in doing so, summon them to rise rather than sowing suspicion from phantom assumptions. You reserve your fury for authentic threats and stop squandering it on dumb inconveniences.

The reward is a good and well-flowing life. You perceive the truth as it stands and you yield to it- because everything rooted in truth serves you, even when it feels scalding. Suspect yourself, and in that humility you’ll become sovereign. Hold your reactions to the light, and watch how many of them are merely smoke.

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The following is a story from Fables from Boccaccio and Chaucer by Dr. John Aiken,

“A goose who was plucking grass upon a common thought herself affronted by a horse who fed near her; and, in hissing accents, thus addressed him:

“I am certainly a more noble and perfect animal than you, for the whole range and extent of your faculties is confined to one element. I can walk upon the ground as well as you; I have, besides, wings, with which I can raise myself in the air; and when I please, I can sport on ponds and lakes, and refresh myself in the cool waters. I enjoy the different powers of a bird, a fish, and a quadruped.”

The horse, snorting somewhat disdainfully, replied: “It is true you inhabit three elements, but you make no very distinguished figure in any one of them. You fly, indeed; but your flight is so heavy and clumsy, that you have no right to put yourself on a level with the lark or the swallow. You can swim on the surface of the waters, but you cannot live in them as fishes do; you cannot find your food in that element, nor glide smoothly along the bottom of the waves. And when you walk, or rather waddle, upon the ground, with your broad feet and your long neck stretched out, hissing at everyone who passes by, you bring upon yourself the derision of all beholders.

I confess that I am only formed to move upon the ground; but how graceful is my make! How well turned my limbs! How highly finished my whole body! How great my strength! How astonishing my speed! I had much rather be confined to one element, and be admired in that, than be a goose in all!”

You say you want to win. You say you want to use every second you’ve got before the dirt covers you. You say you want to master your craft, help people, live a life so interesting it could put the renaissance to shame. Beautiful. But none of that matters until you answer the only question that does- do your fantastical plans agree with what you do on the daily?

The Stoics had a word for what you’re after- homologia, living in agreement with yourself. Where your thoughts match your words and your words match what your hands actually do on a slow Tuesday afternoon when nobody’s watching and the phone is right there. Epictetus put it plainly, you have one job- to keep your faculty of choice, your prohairesis, sovereign and consistent. Everything else is subsidiary. But most people are walking civil wars. They set an alarm for 5 a.m., hit snooze three times, then spend the afternoon telling someone about their morning routine. They meal-prep on Sunday and order pizza by Wednesday. They spend hours scheduling ‘deep work’ in their calendar and spend the block toggling between tabs. Their plans aren’t plans at all. They’re contradictions dressed in ambition, and the tragedy is they never sit still long enough to reflect and reorient their actions until it’s too late.

Aristotle called this akrasia- the interesting, human affliction of knowing what’s right and doing the opposite anyway. You know you should study. You scroll. You know you should stay present with the person sitting across from you at dinner. You reach for the notification. You know the third drink isn’t going to help anything. You order it anyway. This is what happens when your life has no organizing authority- when each desire operates on its accord, pulling you toward whatever’s shiny in the moment.

Dostoevsky understood this disease better than any philosopher. His Underground Man opens Notes from Underground with a cutting confession- "I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man." Then takes it back. Says he was lying. Then admits the lie was itself spiteful. Here is a man so paralyzed by his own hyper-consciousness that he can't commit to a single sentence about himself. He sees love offered to him- by Liza, a woman willing to trust him- and humiliates her, because caring would require vulnerability. And he can’t endure that. That’s what misalignment looks like when it festers- you’re technically breathing, technically showing up, but the version of you that walks through the door is a stranger to the version that made the plans.

So what does it look like when it works? You decide what sits at the throne- the work, the craft, the calling- and everything else arranges itself beneath it. Governed, not amputated. You still go out on a Friday. You still pour the whiskey. You still waste a Sunday doing nothing. But the indulgence answers to the structure, and the structure answers to the purpose, and when you wake up Monday morning there’s no wreckage to clean up. Seneca called this tranquillitas animi- a settled mind. Where you do what you say you’ll do, and your day actually matches what you said. Your pleasures serve your purpose. Your rest fuels your ambition. Your relationships refine the person you’re becoming instead of dulling them.

And when the alignment becomes wobbly- because it will- you audit. You ask yourself which promise got sloppy, where you’re giving excuses instead of doing the work, which sadness you took like a good boy instead of adressing it- until it curdled into rage and self-sabotage, which corners you cut because the short-term hit felt convenient than the long-term calling. Baldwin wrote that nothing can be changed until it’s faced, and he was talking about society, but he was also talking about you- about the private, painful work of looking at the places where your life just looks like you’re running your mouth. The misalignment is never the catastrophe. Letting it fester is.

This is what it means to live as one thing. Thought, word, and deed moving through the world like a single, deliberate force. The Greeks called it integrity. And it’s a war you win every morning by choosing, again, to be the same person in the dark that you are in the light. Now ask yourself, “Am I working with or against myself?”

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You want to be impressive. You want to walk into a room and have something about you command attention. Aura. You want the work to speak, sure, but you also want people to hear it and then hear them tell other people. To remember your name when you leave.

That hunger is nothing new. The Greeks called it ‘thumos’- the spirited part of the soul that craves recognition, that would rather die remembered than live invisible. It drove Achilles to Troy. But if you recall, it did not end well for him. You think you’re chasing glory when really you’re handing your self-worth to whoever happens to be watching.

And here’s what nobody tel…

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Life isn’t that serious, but it is. It’s not a matter of life or death… though it can be sometimes. It’s a balancing act. To be too dull, too outcome-oriented and stony-faced is to miss out on the beautiful but often dismissed less practical aspects of our existence.

It’s to miss out on the point that lightheartedness and good results aren’t mutually exclusive.

Sure, we have to make a living and help people, but the moments we spend goofing around with those who matter to us is quite as important. We g…

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My mentor once told me that a hospital will squeeze out every last second you’re willing to give it- and some more. I didn’t believe him until the Tuesday I stayed three hours past my shift answering questions I could have delegated, chasing paperwork that wasn’t urgent, and getting pulled into a conversation about hospital politics that had nothing to do with me or my patients. I drove home in the dark, missed dinner with my parents, missed the evening run I’d been promising myself for two weeks, and sat on my bed still in my scrubs- too wired to sleep, too empty to do anything useful. The worst part? The hospital hadn’t taken those hours. I had handed them over, one small distraction at a time, as freely and as foolis…

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Bad things will happen to you. Not might- will. Perhaps someone you trusted will look you in the eye and lie. A person you love will get sick, and the doctors will use words that feel fictional. You’ll pour yourself into work for months and watch it go nowhere, or worse, watch someone else get the credit. And in those moments- sitting in a hospital waiting room, or staring at your phone after a conversation that just ended everything, or lying awake at 2am running the same loop- the hardest thing in the world is to believe that any of this makes se…

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Somewhere along the way, you built a pretty prison. Didn’t need bricks or bars- just a few well placed decisions to entertain a toxic person, to pay a lot for urges and indulgences you don’t even question, to accept invitations for events you don’t even want to attend, a handful of ‘not yets’ you kept rolling forward like you do a software update, and a truly impressive talent for calling your cowardice ‘being realistic.’ And here’s the thing- you did it willingly. Nobody asked you to. You just woke up one day, looked at the full buffet of human experience laid out in front of you, and chose the bread roll.

Congratulations. You played yourself.

The Stoics understood this about two thousand years ago. Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the known world- commander of legions, ruler of an empire stretching from Scotland to Syria- and yet the book he is most remembered for, the Meditations, was never written for an audience. It was a private journal, a daily practice of self-correction, a man talking to himself each morning before the demands of the day arrived. He had barbarians at the border and a plague killing his citizens, and his main journaling concern was whether he was responding with enough virtue. Which is either deeply inspiring or mildly insane, depending on your mood. He kept reminding himself that…

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P.S: Annual & Patron members get all my books with their subscription. The bundle includes, ‘The Best of Marcus Aurelius’ & ‘The Tools’, with over 40,000 words of bonus content + a free copy of ‘The Stoic Manual Vol. 1’ dropping September next year. Patron members also get Lifetime Access to the publication with a one-time fee, all bonuses, and all future benefits- at no extra cost. Featured,

P.P.S: Most people loved the series on How to Deepen Your Friendships, Part I, Part II & Part III. Also check out the practical entries on How To Deal With Toxic People, How to Process & Overcome Grief & How to Prevent and Overcome Burnout. Happy reading!

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It was 3 a.m. and I was supposed to be done.

Thirty six hours in. My eyes felt like sandpaper. I’d eaten half a cold sandwich somewhere around 6 p.m. and called it dinner. I had my bag on my shoulder, my coat in my hand, and I was maybe forty steps from the door when my phone went off. Then again. Then the ward nurse appeared at the end of the corridor with the expression- the one that means there are more.

Six new admissions. All genuinely sick. All mine.

I put my bag down. I walked back. And somewhere between the nurses’ station and the first patient’s bedside, something in me just turned sour. Something hot, unreasonable, looking for somewhere to go. It was a conglomeration of internal whining, a voice that kept tallying everything up- the hours, the hunger, the unfairness of it, the fact that there was nobody to call, …

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Oh man, I have no words. We’ve just hit 100K subscribers. This feels so unreal.

Somehow I knew this would happen.

I told myself not today, not tomorrow, not next week, or the next month.

I gave myself a decade.

A fucking decade just because I couldn’t see myself do anything else except write (I was, and still are- not sure if I’ll practice medicine for a long time, but we’ll see). Even if I’d fail to make a living off of my work, I’d do it for the art and love of the game. I’d do it for how my words and way of saying them have impacted you.

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My sister called on a Tuesday afternoon in October, and in the eleven seconds it took her to say the word cancer, the room became a different room. Same walls, same window, same gray afternoon light- but everything had tilted one degree off-axis, the way a painting hung slightly crooked makes an entire wall feel wrong. She told me later that the whole ordeal felt like watching her own life on a screen- the hospital gown slipping off her shoulder, the doctor’s pen scratching a clipboard, the fluorescent buzz overhead. She was there, and yet she wasn’t. Audience and protagonist simultaneously, trapped inside a story she wasn’t aware she was starring in.

Years later, standing in the wreckage of a different devastation, I recognized it again. A relation…

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Anxiety (read more here- 1, 2, and 3) has robbed me of a lot- it has taxed my potential and levied a heavy fine on the experiences that would have made my life a story worth telling.

I remember the remorse of that fine during a gathering at Maya’s apartment after a bruising week of night shifts. The room was thick with warmth, smelling of cheap Malbec and someone’s Chanel No. 5, humming with the kind of overlapping laughter that makes you desire to belong. People were having fun. And there she was- standing near the bookshelf- the woman I’d noticed three times before in the hospital cafeteria- her fingers tracing the spine of a Borges collection, dark hair falling across her cheekbone, occupying her space with an ease that suggested she had never doubted her right to exist. …

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I learned this lesson from nauseating repetition.

I learned it from the blue light of a phone screen at 2:00 AM, eyes dry, thumb scrolling through an infinite feed, hunting for a dopamine hit that never actually came. I learned it from greasy cardboard takeout boxes because cooking felt like a war I couldn’t win. I l…

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You see it early. Long before the scans, before the labs, before the consent forms are signed.

A patient walks in with a story that starts almost the same way every time. It didn’t seem serious. A fall brushed off. A cut rinsed at home. A swelling ignored because work couldn’t wait. A fever treated with borrowed antibiotics. A pain endured out of pride, fear, or the hope that tomorrow would somehow be different. By the time they reach the ward, the body has already paid interest on that delay. What could have been simple is now complicated. What could have healed fast and clean now needs force, steel, anesthesia, weeks of recovery.

Standing there as a surgeon, you learn a brutal lesson fast- most disasters are slowly accumulating their impetus at any given moment. Like interest, they’re compoun…

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You’ve seen this pattern often enough that it no longer surprises you, yet it remains the central tragedy of human life.

A patient sits across from me with newly diagnosed hypertension or diabetes. They nod. They understand. They repeat back the instructions. Fewer sugars. Less inflammatory food. Take the meds. Walk daily. Lose some weight. Sleep better. And somewhere inside them, a wiser voice agrees. It knows this is manageable. It knows this is reversible. It knows what’s at stake.

Then months pass.

They stop the medication. They skip reviews. They get back to old habits because change feels demanding and discipline hard. You only live once, right? We usually call this laziness or stubbornness. But those words are too weak and inconclusive to my liking. They don’t explain why a rational pe…

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