Introduction

For some time mediation and stoicism concepts are getting traction around the world. Most of the favorite motivation speakers and authors (like Tim Ferriss, Kevin Rose, Lewis Howes) are promoting this approach and ensure us how it is positively changing their life. In the smartphone era, we have a lot of excellent and practical applications like Calm and Headspace which can support it.

Recently I encountered and read a book “Meditations - Living, Dying and the Good Life by Marcus Aurelius”, which is rich in a variety of bright and smart insights. In my opinion, Marcus Aurelius is one of the people strongly related to all Stoicism and meditation topics.

Therefore I would like to share with you a few notes from the book.

1 - Focus and Goals

"Concentrate every minute like a Roman like a man - on doing what is in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.”

“If you do not have a consistent goal in life, you can not live it in a consistent way. Unhelpful, unless you specify a goal."

Usually, we are forgetting that our time on the planet is limited and we are focusing on tasks, actions which do not generate values for ourselves or the community.

Every second, every minute, every hour we are distracted by notifications, impulses from the digital world. Such events are taking us from the most essential things like goals definition and realization, build and maintain a relationship with family members and friends.

We need to be strong and avoid distractions and be laser-focused to achieve our goals and live positively with nature.

It was written a long time ago, but in my opinion, the general concept is still valid, if we want to realize something useful or outstanding, we need to be prepared to eliminate all kind of noise. I fully agree with the statement that life without goals is some kind of “empty” life. We should start a meaningful life, be more connected in real with people.

2 - Worrying About

"Do not waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people - unless is affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You will be preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why and what they are saying, and what they are thinking, and what they are up to, and all the other things that throw you off, and keep you from focusing on your own mind."

Too often I see that people are talking about unimportant, not valuable things, on topics which they do not have any impact on or it has no effect on their life. Nevertheless, they are investing in the crucial resource which we all have - time and words.

They think that this is the proper way to communicate, to use the time - in my opinion, it is quite the opposite.
It is hard to change this state, I was also there, it took me a while to escape from it. It is possible to do it by implementing, in the beginning, a few simple steps like:

• question value of everything (it is important to me? how it can improve my or family life? how I can benefit from it?)
• turn TV off
• avoid visiting “crappy” websites with rumors and negative news
• read more and more books

3 - Control Emotions

"We need to pay attention to our impulses, making sure they do not go unmoderated, that they benefit others, that they are worthy of us. We need to steer clear of desire in any form and not try to avoid what’s beyond our control."

In nowadays, we need to take more attention to what we are saying or writing because in the digital world it is easier than ever to record and use it in an inappropriate way. We should keep our impulses in a "secure box”, where can we work on them and filter in the way that nobody can use it against us.

Recently we had news about “inappropriate tweets” made by Elon Musk or even some time ago by James Gunn who was fired from making Guardians of the Galaxy volume 3.

It is critical to avoid such mistakes by controlling more carefully our emotions and actions. For sure this is not some easy task, but let’s try it.

4 - Mind Perception

"People try to get away from it all - to the country, to the beach, to the mountain. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic, you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful - more free of interruptions - than your own soul."

This is the quite interesting statement which I read in the book, but if we spend a little more time to analyze it and try to understand it, we are able to retrieve essential lessons from it.

From my side, the critical point is that we need to be able to focus on our mental health every day not only during the vacation time, because each day we are dealing with good and bad news, actions or feelings from the different areas like work, our bosses, co-workers or family and friends.

We should not forget that holidays have another purpose​ than only that. We should re-charge our mind day by day, not during weekends or some days-off. If we are aware of that, we should start controlling and influencing our mind to find and reach peace more often than usual.

For sure in the beginning, it will be difficult to do it, but I am pretty convinced that after some while, we will be able to do it quicker and with less energy. Meditations lessons are one of the elements which can be helpful here.

5 - Limited Time and Life

“Not to live as if you have endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you are alive and able - be good.”
“Our life is so brief”

In the end, I shared with you two additional and short quotes from this book, which are like previous ones crucial and rich of the essence of lifestyle. I do not want to go into details about them, because they are quite clear - we should treat our life with respect. Each second is counting...

Summary

The book contains a lot more important and useful “tips” and “guidelines”, so I encourage you to read it. For sure, time which you invest in, will not be wasted.

If you like it, I would appreciate thumb up, and if you have time, please share your thoughts about meditation or stoicism topics.

Thanks.