I practice stoic life philosophies to live with clarity. The universe is indifferent to my suffering. I don't demand that things happen as I wish. Things outside my control will happen as they do happen. I use stoic ideas to go on well. Stoicism as a philosophy for life is practical wisdom for the pressures of life. For loss, uncertainty, and the difficulty of staying sane when everything everywhere falls apart. You will face things outside your control. You will waste time on what doesn't matter. And will let fear distort your thinking. Even people's opinions can take over your decisions. The Stoics had answers for all of it. These are seven of their most powerful rules and practical tools you can use right now.

#Choose discomfort deliberately. The stoics practiced voluntary hardship. Seneca recommended it. Once in a while, live as if you had nothing. Spend a few days in deliberate austerity. Imagine the worst. And be grateful for what you have. They practiced this habit to be more aware of the addiction to comfort. Addiction brings out the worst in you. When you choose difficulty on your own terms, two things happen. First, you discover that the thing you feared, simple life and everything else you think you can't live without, is survivable. Second, you stop being controlled by your need to avoid it. Seneca said."Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: 'Is this the condition that I feared?'"

Apply this small. Cold showers and long walks to wake your brain up. Fasting one day a week. Choosing the harder path when the easier one is available. You're building a tolerance for difficulty that pays dividends in the future. And an antifragile brain for the worst-case scenarios.

#See things as they are. Not as you fear them. Marcus Aurelius practiced objective representation. Strip away all subjective interpretation. And emotional attachment from what you observe. See reality for what it is. Your boss's feedback may be "devastating." But that reality in your head is your emotional response. You could think of it as "feedback I can use," to stay functional. Framing things objectively can mean different outcomes. Sometimes it's the clarity you need. The Stoics were obsessive about accurate perception. They knew distorted perception creates unnecessary suffering. See things clearly, and you suffer less.

Stop adding imaginary pain to practical problems.

#Remember the shortness of life. The stoic term for that is memento mori. "You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think," says Marcus Aurelius. The thought of the end of your life exposes what matters and strips away everything that doesn't. If you think about everything consuming your energy right now. The arguments and the grudges. The status game you're playing. The approval you're pursuing. Hold each one against the fact that your time is short. Some things survive that test. Many don't. The stoics used this as a daily reminder to spend their short life on what deserves it. Seneca was right when he said, "Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested.

But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death's final constraint to realise that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life, but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it."

Memento mori is the antidote to waste.

#Act for the common good. Wisdom, properly applied, flows outward. Marcus Aurelius said," What injures the hive injures the bee." The stoics believed your flourishing is entangled with the flourishing of those around you. Don't just accumulate. Be a person of value. "Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one," says Aurelius. It's an accurate understanding of what a good life requires. You're not meant to optimise yourself in isolation. "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well," says philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. You're meant to function well within your family, team and social circle. Every role you play comes with duties. The stoics took those duties seriously. Seneca thought anyone who withdraws entirely into themselves, who lives for themselves alone, is incomplete.

#Be ruthless with your attention. The stoics guarded their time and attention long before smartphones made this a modern crisis. "Hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day's task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow's. While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession," says Aurelius. He was writing to a friend who wasted time on trivial obligations and other people's agendas. Your attention is finite. Every hour spent on someone else's unnecessary priorities is an hour not spent doing what you must.

Every distraction you allow robs you of today's life. It doesn't mean become antisocial or selfish. It means being deliberate about what earns your focus. Books over media garbage. Deep work over busy work. Meaningful conversations with the people you live. Aurelius practiced this in the middle of ruling an empire. He blocked time for philosophy, for writing, for thinking. Audit your week. Where is your attention actually going? What's earning it that shouldn't be?

#Control what you can. Release what you can't. Epictetus called it the dichotomy of control. Some things are "up to us." Everything else, other people's opinions, outcomes, the economy, what Trump does next are falls outside your jurisdiction. He wrote, "Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens." Most suffering comes from inverting this. You stress yourself trying to control outcomes you can't touch, while neglecting the one thing you actually own, your response. The stoic advice is to get back to your actions if something goes wrong. If an experience is in your control, act. If not, release it. It rewires your response to everything that irritates you.

"Let it be, let yourself be."

"Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control," says Epictetus. He also said, "The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control."

#Act well. Outcomes are not yours to own. You can prepare, execute, and deliver your best work and still fail. The client can say no. The book doesn't sell. The relationship ends. The market turns south. Factors outside your control determine outcomes in ways your effort cannot guarantee. That's why the stoics practiced amor fati, love of fate. The active acceptance of what you cannot change, combined with full commitment to what you can do. In the words of Epictetus, "Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions." You don't choose the result. Your job is to act well. The outcome belongs to the universe. It's a philosophy that freed you from getting attached to what you can never control. Anxiety about failure. Obsession over recognition.

The paralysis of needing a guaranteed return before you try. Acting well is its own standard. You give full effort because the effort is the one thing that's entirely yours. Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself, "The obstacle is the way." He didn't need the outcome to validate the effort. Neither do you.

These seven rules have changed my life.

The stoics understood that the source of suffering is almost never our external experiences. The meaning you attach to anything, the control you want that's out of your influence. And the comfort you refuse to surrender, are the sources of a miserable life. The only thing that has ever belonged to you is your response to an indifferent life. The universe owes you nothing. But what you do, say, think, feel, interpret changes everything. Act well, release the rest, and you'll find that's all you need to build a life on. "He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has," says Epictetus. Accept what is, do what you must. You have more to do with your better life than you think.

"Get busy with life's purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue-if you care for yourself at all-and do it while you can." — Marcus Aurelius