I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Stoic.

Yesterday - Our Well-Being Lies In Our Actions

My happiness should not be based on things I can’t control. Things like praise. Instead happiness is gained by putting our best effort into things. I’ve thought about this with regards to writing. When I blogged for baseball or even for the security industry, I got great satisfaction out of the process not whether people liked it. I tied my happiness though to getting the viewer numbers as high as possible. I realized that once I hit publish the piece is gone. It will be read for a day or two and then be forgotten.

I got that same feeling from podcasting. With podcasting I never cared about the statistics. I enjoyed the process of creating it and making the content the best it could be. I figured listener ship would come from that. I’m starting to learn that I need to apply that to my work. Give everything I have in the moment and let the rest fall into place or even not.

Today - Count Your Blessings

Coveting other things is one way to not have happiness. I feel like I don’t have a lot of envy for possessions. What I do envy is how people act. How someone can be as calm as Major Richard Winters. Athletes and their competitive drive and calm demeanor when the stakes at their highest. I’m looking to executives and marveling at how calm and collected they can be. I don’t know if that applies. I think it does. I should look to them as an examples and not envy their sense of calmness that I feel I lack. I should recognize I’m my own person with my own style and that’s okay.