You Should Make This List

and keep adding to it.

Marcus Aurelius, emperor of the Roman Empire kept a list.

It was right at the front of his notebooks.

What was it?

The people that he was grateful for their guidance or teachings in one area or another.

He wrote, for instance:

"Catulus - not to shrug off a friend's resentment—even unjustified resentment—but try to put things right."

"Maximus - self-control and resistance to distractions. Optimism in adversity—especially illness"

The list of people goes on and on for pages.

Some of these were friends and family.

Others still were authors or thinkers that changed him in some fundamental way.

One would think that having the time to do this would mean he had a life of leisure, free of conflict.

One would be very, very wrong.

Writer Ryan Holiday notes that Aurelius' reign:

"Lasted just 19 years. This turned out to be enough time for a plague, a coup by one of his closest friends, to lose 5 of his children, a plague, the loss of his stepbrother (and co-ruler), an economic crisis, and more."

Yet in the midst of it all, he wrote in his journal for the people he was grateful for.

Sebastian Junger wrote:

“Humans don't mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.”

I challenge you, Dear Reader, to make your own list of people.

None of us got to where we are without the influence of others, whether we know them personally, or have merely been influenced by them.

For those that you are able to tell, tell them what they mean to you.

Nothing makes us happier than feeling necessary.