Remember: taking the money, wanting the money—proverbially or literally—makes you a servant to the people who have it. Indifference to it, as Seneca put it, turns the highest power into no power, at least as far as your life is concerned.

“When you are distressed by an external thing, it’s not the thing itself that troubles you, but only your judgment of it. And you can wipe this out at a moment’s notice.”

trusting that you are on the right path, and not being in doubt by following the myriad footpaths of those wandering in every direction.” It is this state of mind, he says, that produces tranquility.

Our judgment affects what we desire, our desires affect how we act, just as our judgment determines how we act.

The answer is that you cannot. And so you are driven into failure—or worse, into madness by the oblivion of directionlessness.

“Only the paranoid survive,” Andy Grove, a former CEO of Intel, famously said. It might be true. But we also know that the paranoid often destroy themselves quicker and more spectacularly than any enemy.

No need to be too hard on yourself. Hold yourself to a higher standard but not an impossible one. And forgive yourself if and when you slip up.

Strength is the ability to maintain a hold of oneself.

DON’T LET YOUR ATTENTION SLIDE