It’s incredible how much of what the Stoics wrote about 2,000 years ago still applies today.

One sentence, just three words long, has stuck with me the most:

Therefore establish your own guilt as far as you can. Investigate yourself; play the part of the prosecutor, then of the judge, only then of the advocate. Offend yourself sometimes.

Offend yourself sometimes.

My upbringing didn’t involve role models who showed me how to do this, so it took me years to figure out how to achieve it more often than not.

For the longest time, I didn’t really understand what "ego" was or how it could get in my way. I’m not sure when it finally clicked, but at some point, I realized that who I want to be and what my ego tries to accomplish are often two separate things.

My ego makes me defensive. Whether it’s defending me from others or from myself, if it’s something I shouldn’t be shielded from but should confront, this defensiveness blocks my personal growth.

I have to offend myself without taking offense.

I treat relationships, health, and hobbies like projects that demand effort, and whose success is my responsibility.

They become a perpetuum mobile of self-efficacy. The more I invest, the more control I feel over my life. This builds momentum. This flywheel can only be stopped by a lack of kindness toward myself.

To make this work, I see the things important to me as malleable, and I see myself as someone who can shape them.

Since everything, including myself, changes over time, this is a never-ending cycle of improvement. Hoping something will stay the same is a futile fight against entropy.

So I embrace entropy as a fundamental truth and consider everything important to me as a fun project I get to work on.

Making an effort is never wasted.