This was coming from one of the most successful entrepreneurs of his time. Rockefeller was the founder of Standard Oil, the man who built the first true oil empire in the United States. At one point he was the richest man in the world and became the country’s first billionaire. His name is still synonymous with wealth and industry.

He believed that all the anxiety wasn’t worth it. “All the fortune that I have made has not served to compensate for the anxiety of that period,” Rockefeller said about his time of excessive worry.

You will never get back the time you spend worrying, beating yourself up, and walking around with a depressed state of mind. When you face hardship in life, it’s easy to get down and think, “Why me? Why can’t life be easy for once?”

Well, I’ve been there many times too, and here’s what I’ve come to realize every single time: Life is never easy… And that’s exactly why we need to be tough.

You can have everything going for you and get hit with a disease. You can have all the money in the world and lose your child. You can love your career and have it taken away from you in an instant because of the economy.

The science of mental toughness

The word mental toughness sounds modern, but the idea isn’t. Athletes and coaches started using it in the late 20th century, and by the early 2000s, psychologists began to study it seriously.

In 2002, researchers Graham Jones, Sheldon Hanton, and Declan Connaughton published a landmark paper in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology that tried to answer the question: What is this thing called mental toughness?

Put simply, mental toughness means having a psychological edge that allows you to cope better than others with the demands of life, and to stay focused, confident, and in control under pressure.

Mental toughness is your ability to perform when everything feels like it’s falling apart. It’s not about ignoring fear or stress. It’s about showing up to the best of your ability despite the hardships of life.

Science just gave a name to something our ancestors already understood. The Stoics talked about it two thousand years ago.

Seneca said:

“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”

Obstacles are normal (don’t believe what you see)

We live in a world where people want to hide their obstacles. We only see the highlights of everyone’s life: the vacations, new jobs, business milestones, excessive stock returns, babies being born, completion of marathons, and so forth.

What we don’t see is that all people face the same issues of life. We all deal with moments of weakness. We all deal with obstacles and hardships.

But because our view of life is not edged in reality, our expectations of what a normal life is are messed up.

Are the following things normal?

• Being happy every minute of every day?
• Making more money every single year?
• Never arguing in your relationship?
• Going on a vacation every other month?
• Spending everything you earn?
• Always being healthy?

You’re probably saying no to these things. But secretly, you probably are expecting some of these things to happen to you, right?

Social media is really a disease of our times. Believing what you see online can seriously disturb your mental peace. Instead of believing that a perfect life is normal, believe that a hard life is normal.

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said:

“Life is deeply steeped in suffering, and cannot escape it: our existence is in fact a tragedy.”

That’s basically his core idea: life is tragedy. Not because everything is bad, but because pain and hardship are unavoidable.

Everything is training

Just because life is hard doesn’t mean we should bend the knee. I’ve adopted the philosophy of Bruce Lee when it comes to this. Here’s what he believed:

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”

As the platitude goes, the only way out of challenges is through. Don’t wish life was easy, wish you were stronger.

You know, the stuff they talk about on motivational posters. The truth is that you need mental toughness to endure a hard life. And since a hard life is the rule and not the exception, we all need to be mentally tougher.

But there’s a difference between reading a quote and living according to a principle. If you live according to the idea that you should focus on building mental toughness, you see everything as training.

Every time you notice some form of friction within you (complaining, giving up, anger), tell yourself:

THIS IS TRAINING

One of the most mentally tough people in my life is my dad. For all his adult life, he lived far away from his parents and siblings. He worked himself up from a cleaner at an industrial laundry to a manager.

He lost his parents relatively young, and he also lost his youngest brother. He built a business from scratch in a country he did not grow up in. And even though he can complain and get grumpy at times, he always took care of his responsibilities.

Forget about the Michael Jordans and Elon Musks of the world. Mental toughness is taking care of your own. It’s showing up every day to your best ability and making sure your life is in order.

And if that’s hard to do, don’t be surprised. Life’s supposed to be hard.

Just remember, you can’t make an omelet without cracking eggs.

The post Mental Toughness Part I: Life is hard appeared first on Darius Foroux.

Every time I feel complacent or start complaining too much, I go back to the Stoics. They remind me of something I’ve always felt: Hardship is good.

Most people think happiness comes from comfort. From eliminating struggle. From making life as easy as possible.

But comfort is overrated. Life without challenges is not life at all. It’s an early death.

Hardship as training

Even as a child, I had a sense that hardship was good. My parents always offered to drive me to school when it rained. But I detested that. I would just put on a rain suit and go to school on my bike in rain, snow, or storms.

Throughout the years, my parents brought me to school a handful of times, and that was when I was sick. And even then, I put my bike in the car so I could cycle back myself. I just didn’t want to be weak.

On top of that, where we lived in the Netherlands, you would hear it all day from your friends if you didn’t come on the bike. We would say, “Are you made of sugar or something? Wuss.” That was my generation. I’m not sure it’s still like that today.

I was talking about this with my wife the other day. We just found out we’re expecting a boy. I told her I hope he never wants us to drive him to school. Not because I wouldn’t want to, but because I think it’s character-building. Then I said I don’t know about this generation that loves comfort. I wouldn’t be surprised if the making fun of you for having your parents drive you to school is no longer around.

Seneca saw this clearly two thousand years ago.

“Excellence withers without an adversary. The time for us to see how great it is, how much its force, is when it displays its power through endurance.”

Strength only grows through resistance. Seneca said that wrestlers don’t train with weak opponents. They demand to fight the strongest. Otherwise their skill rots.

Life is the same. Prosperity makes you soft. Struggle makes you tougher.

Fail. Fail again. Then win.

The pattern of life is often the same:

Fail.
Fail again.
Fail some more.
Then win.

That’s how you build endurance. That’s how you learn to fight back after setbacks. That’s how you build a spine that doesn’t bend at the first sign of adversity.

Seneca again:

“Prosperity that is undiminished cannot withstand a single blow; but the man who has struggled constantly against his own ills becomes hardened by suffering and no misfortune makes him yield. Indeed, if he falls, he still fights on his knees.”

The person who only knows good times crumbles the first time things go wrong. But the person who fails often, who gets knocked down, who knows pain, becomes unshakable. That’s the type of person I want to be.

Always have a fight in front of you

One way to practice this is to always work on something massive. A project you can never finish. For me, that’s writing.

I’ve been at it for more than a decade. And I can say I’ve improved. But every time I get better, I realize how much better I can get. There’s always something to improve.

There’s no finish line. That’s the point.

When you commit to something endless, you train your endurance. You accept that you’ll never be “done.” You learn to love the process of fighting uphill.

Shun luxury

Another way: Avoid luxury.

Marvin Hagler, the famous boxer, once said: “It’s tough to get out of bed to do roadwork at 5 a.m. when you’ve been sleeping in silk sheets.” He was right. Comfort kills drive.

Seneca warned against it too:

“Shun luxury, shun good fortune that makes men weak… unless something happens to remind them of their human lot, they waste away, lulled to sleep, as it were, in a drunkenness that has no end.”

Luxury is a trap. It feels good at first, but it slowly eats away at your strength. It makes you fragile. The less you can tolerate discomfort, the less you can tolerate life.

I’ve always kept my life relatively simple. Not because I can’t afford more comfort, but because I don’t want to lose my edge. I don’t want to grow dependent on silk sheets.

Hardship is a gift

Here’s what Seneca said about parenting:

“Do you not see how differently fathers and mothers show their love? The father orders his children to be roused early to pursue their studies, not allowing them to be idle even on a holiday, and wrings from them sweat and sometimes tears; but the mother wants to cherish them in her embrace and keep them out of the sun’s glare, and wishes them never to know sadness, never to shed tears, never to toil.”

It’s not about the role of the father or mother because sometimes it’s reversed. The point is that it’s the parents’ encouragement to do hard things that builds strength.

Harship is not here to crush us, but to build us.

This is how I want to raise my son. Not sheltered, but tested. Not protected from every difficulty, but prepared to face them.

If you think about it, hardship is really a gift. But you never think that way when you’re doing the hard things. You think to yourself, “I wish it were over.”

But afterwards, you always look back, and say, “I’m glad I did it.”

Adversity as medicine

The hardest lesson Seneca teaches in On Providence is that even the worst tragedies can be of benefit. Poverty, exile, sickness, disgrace. He compares them to surgery. Painful, yes. But often the only way to heal.

If you never face adversity, you never test yourself. And if you never test yourself, you never know your strength.

Demetrius, a Stoic philosopher Seneca admired, said it best:

“Nothing seems to me more unhappy than the man who has no experience of adversity. For he has not been allowed to put himself to the test.”

That’s the real tragedy. Not suffering. Not loss. But living a life so easy that you never discover what you’re capable of.

The early death of comfort

So here’s the lesson Seneca shared: Hardship is the way forward.

Do the hard thing. Get up early. Take the long route. Do your thing regardless of the weather. Take on the project you can’t finish. Resist luxury.

Fail. Fail again. Fail some more. Then win. That’s the rhythm.

Life without challenges is not life. It’s an early death.

The post Life Without Challenges Is an Early Death appeared first on Darius Foroux.

Most of life is a trade. Time for money. Skill for opportunity. Trust for results. 

Many things in life are not like that because people are evil, but because incentives drive us as human beings. 

And when people don’t get what they want, they often get nasty. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus explained why that is:

“When any person harms you or speaks badly of you, remember that he acts from a supposition of its being his duty.”

People always think they are doing the right thing… in their perspective of course. If someone feels like you wronged them, it’s because they really believe that.

Work conflicts that turn personal

I’ve heard a version of the following many times. Someone recommends a friend for a job. The friend gets hired. Then they don’t perform. Now the company questions the person who vouched for them. It’s awkward. It hurts. 

And it often ends the friendship. I’ve lived a version of that myself. Years ago I recommended a friend at our family company. It didn’t work out and our friendship basically ended. 

It’s really unfortunate when these things happen because it’s not necessary. When money, careers, and status enter the room, friendship is often secondary.

Indifference is the default, not the exception

My mom recently got veneers at a well-known clinic in Bocholt, Germany. It all started with great promises. But as the process went on, there were complications. 

My mom has pain with no clear cause. Suddenly the warmth from the dentist and their team evaporated. Busy calendars. Slow replies. A maze of “let’s wait and see.” 

This is sadly a common issue. When the sale is done, the incentive shifts. Fixing messy problems is expensive and take time. No one is waiting for that. 

There is no reward in actually helping people for them. But here’s the ting: You are not crazy for expecting care and support from service providers. You are just expecting something the system is not designed to deliver.

Epictetus gives you the clean way to think about this. People act from their own judgments and incentives. 

It only feels personal when you forget how the game is set up.

The best revenge is to not be like them

In 2018 I bought my first expensive watch at Schaap & Citroen in Groningen. The date function of the watch was broken from the start, and years later the shop refused to help because the warranty had expired. 

I went back last weekend and the clerk got aggressive. So I matched it, we argued, and I left a one-star review. Could they have tried to fix the problem? Yes. Would that have been right? Of course. 

But here is the trap: Expecting strangers to live by your standards guarantees frustration. 

The better move is to keep your standards even when others drop theirs. Speak clearly, stay calm, give a fair chance, then take your business elsewhere without turning it into a personal war.

Marcus Aurelius said, “The best revenge is to not be like your enemy.” It is easy to post that line and hard to practice it in a tense moment. I failed it that day. Next time, I choose my behavior, not theirs.

This mindset means that you stop confusing care with service. A business can serve you well without caring about you as a person. 

Take the win when it happens, and build your plans on contracts, documentation, and alternatives, not on the hope of extra compassion.

Or if you choose to recommend someone at your company, accept the downside upfront. If it goes wrong, do not moralize it. Solve the problem, learn the lesson, and avoid mixing roles in the future.

Just stop turning every disappointment into a story about good and evil. Most of the time it is incentives doing their work. 

This is the world we live in. It’s not good or bad. It’s just the way it is.

Values are promises you keep

“Focus on your values” only matters if you define them in behavior. Tell the truth when it costs you. Do competent work when no one is watching. 

Treat people with respect when they do not deserve it. Keep your cool when you are provoked. None of this depends on how others act. Your standards are yours.

A few people will care. Family, a couple of real friends, maybe a mentor. 

Let the rest be. Try to be the exception yourself and do the boring right thing quietly.

Epictetus explained why people act as they do. Marcus told us how to respond. 

Put those two together, and you get a simple way to live: 

Push when it matters, let go when it does not, and keep your own hands clean.

The post No One Cares About Your Feelings appeared first on Darius Foroux.

Over the last 3 years, I’ve spent a lot of time in the south of Spain, around Marbella. You can just smell the desperation in the air. Everyone wants to look rich. Luxury cars, designer clothes, Instagram-perfect lives. It’s all about appearances.

But it’s not only in places like Marbella. Even in my hometown of Leeuwarden, a place that’s never been rich or glamorous, I’m noticing the same trends. 

Leeuwarden is a simple working-class city. But lately, you see more expensive cars on the streets. Men obsess over Swiss watches and go to the barber every two weeks. Women carry designer bags and get Botox or fillers at the countless clinics that are popping up all over town. 

It’s as if having money (or appearing rich) has become the ultimate benchmark for self-worth.

Look at the internet. Whether it’s Twitter, Substack, Medium, or YouTube, most content revolves around money. “How to become rich,” “Passive income secrets,” “Millionaire mindset.” We’re all desperately chasing wealth.

But wealth alone isn’t enough anymore. We also crave fame. We take pictures all the time—posing, sharing, posting—as if our lives are part of some grand movie. We hope for likes, follows, and validation. Fame and money are intertwined desires that fuel off each other. 

Yet, these cravings for money and fame are nothing new. Nearly 2,000 years ago, Seneca warned us about the emptiness of these pursuits: “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”

If we constantly desire more, we can never truly be satisfied. It doesn’t matter if you drive a Ferrari or carry a Hermes bag. If your happiness depends on external validation or material wealth, you’ll always feel empty inside.

Seneca also said that, “If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich.”

The real question we should ask ourselves is this: Why do we allow others to dictate what makes us feel worthy? When we live to impress others, we surrender our inner peace. We’re forever poor because we never have enough of what we don’t truly need.

Try a different path. Embrace simplicity. Measure yourself by your own standards, not by the opinions of others. Real wealth isn’t displayed; it’s felt within. It’s freedom, calmness, health, and genuine connections with people you care about.

Remember this next time you’re tempted by the illusion of wealth and fame. You really don’t need more stuff to be happy. You don’t need more followers or likes to feel important. 

Your real life isn’t a movie. And thank goodness for that!

The post Everybody Wants to Be Rich appeared first on Darius Foroux.

“Some things are under our control, while others are not under our control. Under our control are conception, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything that is our own doing; not under our control are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, everything that is not our own doing. Furthermore, the things under our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unimpeded; while the things not under our control are weak, servile, subject to hindrance, and not our own.”

The key to happiness and inner peace is simple. No matter what happens in your life. And that’s not an understatement. No matter what happens, always remember to focus on what’s within your control. I can pretty much guarantee that every time you were overwhelmed, it was because you ignored this first rule of Stoicism.

Let’s just call it Rule #1 for simplicity’s sake because it’s truly the most important thing. It’s just like the novel and movie Fight Club. The first rule is also the second rule. In other words: Focusing on what you control is the single most important thing in life.

You could be going through a divorce right now. Maybe you were fired this morning. Or slipped on your walk to the office and broke your ankle. You could’ve received a scary medical diagnosis, or worse, for your loved one. 

Remember Rule #1. 

What we need to do during tough times is to use a mental switch that reminds us: “Hey, remember about Stoicism? Now it’s time to practice that stuff.”

The best example I’ve found is from James B. Stockdale, a former U.S. Navy vice admiral and aviator who was held captive during the Vietnam War for over seven years. In his memoir Courage Under Fire, he described the moment he realized that he would be held captive:

“On September 9, 1965, I flew at 500 knots right into a flak trap, at tree-top level, in a little A-4 airplane—the cockpit walls not even three feet apart—which I couldn’t steer after it was on fire, its control system shot out. After ejection I had about thirty seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed in the main street of a little village right ahead. And so help me, I whispered to myself: “Five years down there, at least. I’m leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.”

For most of us, life won’t get that dire. But like Stockdale, we often have only a handful of seconds before we decide to (1) feel sorry for ourselves because something bad happened or (2) remember the world of Epictetus and Rule #1. 

Before you were aware of Stoicism, you only had one option. Let’s say you applied for 30 jobs the last month and you didn’t even get one reply.

What do you think about yourself?

Or maybe you’ve been trying to start a business for five years but you can’t get a single sale.

Will you keep going?

You have a few seconds to decide how you’re looking at these types of events. After the first few failed attempts, you think, “I should keep going.”

But after being ignored for a long time, you might start doubting yourself. You might even give up. That one decision can mess you up forever. 

But it’s not events that mess us up. It’s how we interpret the events. Is something the worst thing ever, or just an insignificant hiccup? And let’s be honest, when it comes to applying for jobs or starting a business, the outcomes are not in your hands. You only control your actions.

Will you be more motivated and try new ways to succeed? Will you read books and take courses to learn more? Will you sleep on time every night? Go to the gym? Get in better shape?

Or just say that life is hard and start feeling sorry for yourself?

We all know that we just have one viable option: And that is to JUST KEEP GOING. It doesn’t matter how you get to where you want to get, it just matters that you keep moving.

That’s the most important thing in life. Never stop. Never give up.

As the Ancient Roman proverb goes, all roads lead to Rome. You will arrive at your desired destination at some point.

We all face rejection. We all experience setbacks. But those who succeed are the ones who understand that they can only control their response to situations.

So every time something happens that makes you frustrated, down, agitated, or anxious, hold onto Rule #1: You control your actions, not the outcomes.

The post Rule #1 of Stoicism: Know what’s within your control appeared first on Darius Foroux.