A Roman Emperor wrote a journal to keep himself sane. You can too.

The Meditations (Greek: Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, "To Himself") is a personal journal kept by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) during his military campaigns on the Danube. It was never intended for publication — Marcus wrote in the second person, to himself, as a series of reminders and self-corrections. The work survived only by accident, preserved in a single manuscript tradition. It is the most direct window we have into the private philosophical practice of a Stoic: not a treatise arguing for Stoicism but a man using Stoicism as a daily tool for self-regulation while running the largest empire in the world.

Several: the dichotomy of control (returning again and again to distinguishing what is in his power from what is not); the view from above (imagining his situation from a great distance to reduce its apparent importance); negative visualisation (contemplating the loss of what he values, to appreciate it and reduce attachment); the discipline of impression (examining his automatic reactions before acting on them); and the evening review (the Meditations itself is the product of this — daily written reflection on where he succeeded and failed as a Stoic). He also repeatedly practises impermanence meditation, listing great emperors and generals who are now forgotten.

Because the practice requires it. Marcus returns to anger at incompetence, grief at loss, resentment of flattery, and the pull of status across twelve books written over roughly a decade. Scholars note that the recurring themes show what his specific character weaknesses were — not that the practice failed, but that these were the areas requiring the most repetition. This is the correct use of the Meditations as a model: not "Marcus solved these problems" but "Marcus worked on these problems consistently, and that work is what made him what he was." The Meditations is a record of practice, not of achievement.

Book II, section 1: "Begin the morning by saying to thyself: I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial." This opening of each day with a prepared mind for difficulty is one of the most practical Stoic techniques in the text. Book V, section 8: on why obstacles are fuel rather than stops. Book IX, section 3: on impermanence and how quickly everything is forgotten. Book X, section 6: "Everything harmonises with me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe." Gregory Hays's 2002 Modern Library translation is the most accessible for contemporary readers.