Meditations

Three of the ideas you’ll keep

The Clif summary of Meditations pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first three.

1. You are disturbed not by events but by your judgments about them. Since the opinion is yours, the power to revise or drop it (and regain your peace) is also entirely yours.
2. No retreat is quieter or more untroubled than your own soul. You don't need the countryside or the sea; you can withdraw into yourself and reset your mind in any moment you choose.
3. The impediment to action advances the action. What stands in the way becomes the way: the mind adapts every obstacle into fresh material for practicing virtue.

The other 4 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.

What’s inside: 9 chapters

The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.

1. A Notebook Written to Himself
2. You Control Your Judgments, Nothing Else
3. The Inner Citadel
4. Preparing to Meet Difficult People
5. The Obstacle Becomes the Way
6. Everything Flows, So See It Plainly
7. Memento Mori and the Present Moment
8. Sympatheia and the Common Good
9. Amor Fati and the View From Above