Remove the Friction. Build the Inner Citadel.#

“Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good… can neither be injured by any of them… nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him. For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1 (George Long)

The first week is not about becoming a sage. It is about stopping the bleeding. Most of your stress is not from events but from the friction you add to them through misjudgment, reactivity, and the failure to distinguish what is yours from what is not.