20 Rules for life from stoics

“When the standards have been set,” Epictetus said, “the work of philosophy is just this, to examine and uphold (поддерживать) the standards, but the work of a truly good person is in using those standards when they know them.”

But the Stoics were not quite so direct in practice. While they spoke, wrote, and debated, nowhere did they put their “commandments” down (сформулировали) in one place. Not in any form that survived (выжила), at least. One Stoic, Chrysippus, supposedly wrote 500 lines a day — the immense (огромный) majority of which are lost.

In studying their writings for my own practice, I’ve compiled 50 rules from the Stoics, gathered from their immense (огромный) body of work across two thousand years. These rules functioned, then, as they do now, as guides to what the ancients called “the good life.” Hopefully some of them will illuminate (освещать, проливать свет) your own path.

1. Focus on what you can control.
2. You control how you respond to things.
3. Ask yourself, “Is this essential?”
4. Meditate on your mortality every day.
5. Own the morning.
6. Remember you have the power to have no opinion.
7. Don’t suffer imagined troubles.
8. Never be overheard complaining—even to yourself.
9. There is always something you can do.
10. “The best revenge is not to be like that.” —Marcus Aurelius
11. Put every impression, emotion, to the test before acting on it.
12. Learn something from everyone.
13. Focus on process, not outcomes.
14. Every person is an opportunity for kindness.
15. Find one thing that makes you wiser every day.
16. Make a little progress each day.
17. Journal.
18. To do wrong to one, is to do wrong to yourself.
19. Courage(храбрость). Temperance(умеренность). Justice(справедливость). Wisdom(мудрость). (Always).