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I woke up at 4 am. And immediately started thinking about These Challenging Times and what Those People Are Doing to America.

That’s a recipe for disaster and insomnia.

For some reason — probably because I say it over and over to myself in my head! — I remembered how the Stoics look at things. What’s inside your control? Your thoughts, mostly. What’s outside of your control? Everything else. If you’re disturbed, it’s probably because you’re focusing on things outside of your control.

Me? Disturbed? Check.

What is wrong with me?

I am working on the wrong side of the Stoic equation. I am putting my intellectual and emotional energy into things outside my control: biological (the damn virus thing) and political forces (the presidential election); the behavior of fallible humans. There’s not a damn thing I can do about them.

What is within my control? My own thoughts. My own actions. So I lay there and remembered the spiritual principles in action. The next thing I remember is looking at my clock to see it was 6:30 am and time for a cup of coffee.

The saying goes “Strike while the iron is hot.” The point is to keep the iron hot. The first thing to go is the reading. It’s time to pick up Seneca again and keep in (spiritual) shape.

“No kind of distress is worse than the feeling you are trapped.”

I feel trapped when there are external conditions that limit me. Every way I turn, I see barriers and impossibilities. Most of the time, though, I manufacture my own barriers and impossibilities.

Here is an example that plays around in my head from time to time. I think about moving to another place instead of where I live right now. This is what happens next:

“I cannot move to (Random Place), because I know no one there. I will be alone. Plus I might not like it there. I will pick a bad neighborhood to live in. The house will be terrible. I might not like the weather. I will have to start from scratch again with my business and I might fail. I will be sad and alone.”

These are made-up reasons, from my own head. I can think of a dozen more reasons to explain to myself why I cannot move to (Random Place). All of them are wrong, and all of them are made up from some kernel of truth.

Yes, I know no one in (Random Place). This is true right now, while I am living where I live. I haven’t even visited (Random Place). How could I possibly make any judgments about the place?

Does the conclusion (“I cannot move to (Random Place) because . . .”) follow from sound premises? Of course not. This is faulty logic. I start from the true assertion that I do not know a soul in (Random Place) and reach the conclusion that I will never have a friend in (Random Place).

Will I forever know no one and be totally alone if I go to (Random Place) and live there? No. When I say it like that it doesn’t make sense.

Etc. Examine every impossibility and see if it comes from your own brain, manufactured from a tiny seed of current truth, but embellished with an enormous amount of speculative fiction.

And isn’t it interesting that the speculative embellishment of the future usually seems to be of the “doom and gloom” variety?

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the brain said instead, “Why not move to (Random Place)? You know what will happen? In two years you will have so many new friends that you won’t have time to take a nap.”

My point here is that I am distressed because I feel trapped by things I think are true, but they are not. They are created by my own thinking, my own imagination. They aren’t real.

I am trapped by my own lies told to myself, which I believe.

How much better would it be to tell myself nothing? Let the future unfold as it will.

Or even better, find the way to self-talk so I experience a future that I truly desire.

Put aside pleasure and pursue the arduous.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about this. There are thousands of internet fingerpainters who will tell you what he really meant. Ignore them all—the inferior quality of discourse will make you sad. What they say is informational—about the fingerpainters’ mentality, not St. Thomas Aquinas or his ideas.

I care about the idea of deliberately choosing the harder way and avoiding the easier, softer way.

Not merely because it is the harder way. But because that’s likely to be where treasure is to be found.

Treasure is an experience, not the objective. Treasure is the result of doing the harder things. You do not choose the harder way because you expect to be given a trophy at the end. No, the reward of the harder way is in itself, regardless of the outcome.

I’ll give you a simple example. Pull-ups. The next-to-last and last pull-up you can do are hard. The easier, softer way would be to pound them out while they are easy, and quit before things get tough. You look awesome to all of those people watching you.

Those last straining, wobbly ones are not fun. You’re struggling at the edge of your abilities. But that where you get stronger physically—and mentally. Where you look weakest, where you struggle and perhaps fail? That’s where you find the treasure.

“I can do hard things that hurt.”

There is power in knowing this truth about yourself.

If you face a decision and don’t know what to do, choosing against the easier, softer way is a reliable choice. Even if you’re wrong you will get stronger.

Or, put it another way: in life, run straight into your shitstorms.

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.” 

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison 

“Against stupidity we are defenseless.” That is sobering.

Can I use my gut to spot the difference between evil and stupid? The answer may be here:

• If I am confused or agitated, this might be a reaction to evil.
• If I am frustrated, that’s me bumping up against the wall of stupidity.

Most important, though: stop looking at other people and labeling them as evil or stupid. Look at yourself. Is there malice or arrogance in your thinking? You already know that as soon as you start feeling really clever it is time to expect the universe to kick you in the ass.

Focus on your own stupidity, Mr. Reality. It’s easy enough (most of the time) to spot the seeds of malice, greed, and other permutations of evil in yourself. But stupidity? You can’t see your own stupidity for a simple reason: you’re being stupid.

Hypothesis: anytime you think you know something with certainty, take it as a warning sign that you’re being stupid. Frustration is probably a clue: “This is so obviously true, how can you even think otherwise?”

Well, other people might think otherwise because they are evil or stupid. Or maybe they see things that I don’t see, and I am the stupid one.

Be humble. There are 7.5 billion people on the planet, give or take. How likely am I, of all of them, to be Right?

1. NOBODY IS COMING TO SAVE YOU.  Whether an event lasts a few seconds, a few hours, or even a few days – you have to work as though nobody is coming to save you.

2. You are your savior, so start working because EVERYTHING IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.  You are your security, you are your medic, you are your rescuer.

3. You are your own best resource to SAVE WHO NEEDS TO BE SAVED.  Nobody wants to save your life more than you, so set yourself up for success by having the simple tools and knowledge to do so: do what you can with what you have.  Recognize that nobody is in a better position to start saving your life than you.

4. Sometimes saving lives means you have to KILL WHO NEEDS TO BE KILLED.  It has been almost 15 years since I first wrote “the more effective you are at taking a life, the more successful you’ll be at saving one” and nothing in the intervening time has changed my mind.  Be swift, be decisive, be final.

5. Mostly, ALWAYS BE WORKING.  There is always something you can be doing to improve your position.  Always.  Because nobody is coming to save you.

Matt Graham, The Killhouse Rules

I read somewhere that there is nothing speaks truth like a gun. When you pull the trigger, there is truth. Life or death. You hit your target or you do not. You made a grievously wrong choice or you acted wisely. As a result, it forces you to think clearly, because the consequences of an action are immediately apparent.

The Killhouse Rules are not rules for killing. They are rules for living, perhaps as clear a set of rules as I have ever heard.