External distractions scatter your life.

Hard work without clear direction is still wasted effort.

Give your thought and action one purpose.

Nobody was ever made unhappy by not knowing what someone else was thinking.

The people who don't watch their own minds are the unhappy ones.

What happens, happens outside you.

What it means, you decide inside.

A disciplined mind stays unconquered.

Your mind takes the colour of whatever you keep putting into it.

Feed it complaints all day and you become one.

Take the thing apart and look at it.

What is it made of? What does it do? How long does it last?

Most things get smaller when you ask.

People plan a week by the sea to get away from it all.

You can step into your own mind any moment you like.

Nowhere is quieter, and it costs nothing.

Look inside the thing.

Its real worth is in there, and it is easy to walk straight past.

When someone wrongs you, they need you to see it their way.

You are not obliged to.

Look at what actually happened.

A first impression tells you what happened.

It does not tell you that you were harmed.

That second part you add yourself.

Drop the thought, I have been wronged,

and the feeling of being wronged goes with it.

Only one thing can ruin your life, and that is becoming someone worse.

Losing money, losing face, losing the job: none of that does it by itself.

What other people think of you happens entirely inside their heads.

You are not in there. Neither is your peace.

Things stand outside your door.

They cannot come in, and they have nothing to say about themselves.

Everything you have heard about them, you said.

Your body will tell you it is tired, cold, hungry, in pain.

Let it. It is telling the truth.

The decision about what to do next is still yours.

When something knocks you off balance, get back on it fast.

The longer you stay out of rhythm, the harder it is to find again.

If someone shows you that you are wrong, change your mind on the spot.

Nobody was ever damaged by the truth.

Staying wrong is the expensive option.

People treat changing their mind as losing.

But the one who was shown a better way and took it made the move.

That was your decision, not theirs.

Wipe the picture off and look at the thing again.

Half of what upset you was in the picture.

The expensive wine is old grape juice.

The designer coat is wool with a name sewn into it.

The job title is a word the company can take back.

None of this is worthless. But say what a thing actually is,

and it stops having a hold on you.

When someone behaves badly, ask what they think is good.

Once you know what they are chasing, the behaviour stops being a mystery.

It also stops being about you.

The trouble starts the moment you call something out there good or bad.

Save those two words for what you do.

Then there is nobody left to blame.

Wanting to be admired puts your peace in other people's hands.

They did not ask for the job and they will not do it well.

You don't have to turn this into something.

Drop the story you are telling about it.

Look at what is in front of you right now.

Look down at it from a long way up.

Traffic, weddings, funerals, arguments in offices, all of it at once.

Your problem is somewhere in there, and you cannot find it.

Everything you hear is somebody's opinion.

Everything you see is somebody's angle.

Including yours.

You can drop the judgement any time you want.

Nobody has ever been physically prevented from doing it.

You could be dead this afternoon.

Let that decide what you say next, and who you say it to.

The only thing anyone can take from you is right now.

The past is already spent. The future has not been handed out yet.

A long life and a short one lose exactly the same thing.

Stop putting it off.

You have been acting as though the days are unlimited.

They are being counted whether you count them or not.

Your life is short.

Your reputation is shorter, and it is kept alive by people who are also dying.

Dying is the same sort of event as being born.

The same parts, arranged differently.

Nature does not consider either one a failure.

Whenever it comes, it arrives on time.

Nothing that happens to you is early.

Time is a river of things happening.

Something appears, is carried past, and is gone before you looked at it properly.

Then the next one.

Be the rock the waves keep crashing over.

It stands still, and the water goes quiet around it.

Bad news, a rude client, a plan that collapses on a Tuesday.

The rock is not lucky. It just doesn't move.

Take what happens the way you take what a doctor prescribes.

Both of them taste bad.

Both were chosen with your health in mind.

Notice how fast it all moves.

Whatever is here now is already on its way out.

That includes the good parts, which is why you keep grabbing at them.

Soon you will be ash, then a name, then not even a name.

And a name is a sound, repeated by people who are also on their way out.

Death puts an end to the pull of the senses,

to being yanked around by what you want,

to the mind running all night.

That is the whole list.

You accept that your body has a size.

Accept that your time has one too.

Nothing can stop you from living the way you were built to live.

Nothing is going to happen to you that is outside the rules.

Don't be afraid of the future in advance.

You will walk into it carrying the same mind you are using right now,

and it has handled everything so far.

Let it happen the way it is happening.

Nothing has been done to you yet.

Bread splits open in the oven. Nobody planned the crack.

It is the part everyone reaches for first.

Not everything that comes apart is going wrong.

Think about what you have, not what you are missing.

Then pick one of the things you have

and work out how hard you would chase it if it weren't yours.

If the pain is unbearable, it will not last long.

If it lasts, you can bear it.

There is no third kind.

Take what you are given without swaggering about it.

Give it back without clinging.

Don't try to carry your whole life at once.

Carry this hour.

Almost nothing is unbearable at that size.

Don't look down on death.

It is on nature's list, next to growing up and losing your hair.

If you can bear it, bear it.

If you can't, it ends when you do.

There is not much time left.

Live the way you were built to live, starting now.

You are afraid of something you have never once experienced.

It is either nothing at all, or something you haven't met yet.

Neither is worth the years you are spending on it.

Soon you will be gone, and so will everyone you can see from where you are sitting.

Everything comes apart and gets used again for something else.

The room does not stay empty.

A thing that finishes at the right moment has not been damaged.

The play ends. Nobody says the play was cut short.

Today you will meet people who are rude, selfish and ungrateful.

They are like that because they don't know any better.

You still have to get the day done with them in it.

Hating them costs you the day. It costs them nothing.

Do the thing in front of you as if it were the last thing you do.

No performance, no drifting off halfway.

Most people never do one thing properly all day.

If getting it means breaking a promise, lying, or stepping on someone,

it was never worth having.

Check the price before you call something good.

Do the work with principle, energy and patience.

Keep the part of you that decides things clean.

Those two are a whole life. There is no third requirement.

Act for the good of the people around you.

And stay ready to be shown a better way of doing it.

Stop living as though the supply is endless.

Death is already in the room, standing quietly at the back.

Want more peace? Do less.

Or better: do only what is necessary.

You get back the time and the quiet in one move.

Take the shortest way through.

Say the plain thing, do the plain thing.

The alarm goes off and the bed is warm.

The ants are already out. So are the birds.

You were made to go out and do your part, same as them.

If it is the right thing to do, do it while people are still criticising you for it.

When you slip, start again.

Nobody does life without slipping.

People are the work. There isn't a different job underneath it.

Do them good where you can, put up with them where you can't.

Do the right thing.

Cold, hot, tired, praised, insulted, dying.

None of that changes what the right thing is.

The best revenge is to be nothing like the person who did it.

One unselfish act, then the next one, with nothing in between.

Nobody has ever been miserable in the middle of that.

Don't call it impossible because you find it hard.

If a human being can do it, it is in range for you.

Power bends people, and it does it slowly enough that they don't notice.

Stay upright, plain, fair and kind.

The moment you need the title to be treated well, it has already happened.

Try to convince them. If they won't be convinced, act anyway and act fairly.

The obstacle becomes the next part of the work.

Don't be embarrassed about needing help.

You are a soldier with a wall to climb and a bad leg.

Someone gives you a hand up. The wall still gets climbed.

Whatever anyone else does or says, your job has not changed.

Be good, the way an emerald is green.

It does not check what the room is doing first.

Three things, every moment of the day.

Take what happened. Deal fairly with the person in front of you.

Look hard at whatever you just assumed.

Give up the idea that you have been living wisely.

You haven't, and everyone who has watched you knows it.

Start from there. It is a better place to start than pretending.

You can do wrong by doing nothing at all.

Clear judgement. Unselfish action. Willing acceptance of whatever comes.

Do those three now.

Nothing further is being asked of you.

Stop arguing about what a good person is.

Be one.

If it isn't right, don't do it.

If it isn't true, don't say it.

You have played your part in a great city.

Three acts or five, what does it matter.

Now leave the stage the way an actor does when the play is over.

Nobody is throwing you off. Your part is finished.

Interlude

Pause. Everything you just read, Marcus wrote while running an empire and burying his children.

The ideas didn't need the empire to survive.