Uncertainty and fear are relieved by authority. Training is authority. - Ryan Holiday

The Greeks had a word for this: apatheia. It's the kind of calm equanimity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of the harmful, unhelpful kind. Don't let the negativity in, don't let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank you. I can't afford to panic.

Take inventory for a second. What do you dislike? Whose name fills you with revulsion and rage? Now ask: Have these strong feelings really helped you accomplish anything? Take an even wider inventory. Where has hatred and rage ever really gotten anyone? Especially because almost universally, the traits or behaviors that have pissed us off in other people — their dishonesty, their selfishness, their laziness — are hardly going to work out well for them in the end. Their ego and shortsightedness contains its own punishment. The question we must ask for ourselves is: Are we going to be miserable just because other people are?

When intelligent people read, they ask themselves a simple question: What do I plan to do with this information?