Eight practices that fit into ordinary days. Pick one. Try it for a week.
Before checking your phone, write three lines on paper: (1) one specific gratitude from yesterday; (2) one intention for today, written as a verb; (3) one person you'll be kind to today, named. Keep it short. Keep it daily. The compounding is the practice.
Sit upright. Imagine the day ahead. Picture, calmly, the small irritations that will likely happen: the rude email, the traffic, the unmet expectation. Decide now how you will meet each one. The Stoics called this premeditatio malorum — not pessimism, but preparation. You aren't expecting the worst. You are refusing to be ambushed by it.
Used by Navy SEALs and Tibetan monks. Inhale for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4. Repeat for five minutes. The hold is the active ingredient — it tells the nervous system you are safe. After three rounds the body usually agrees.
Sit. Bring to mind, one at a time: yourself, a person you love easily, a neutral acquaintance, a person who is hard for you, all beings. For each, silently say: may you be safe; may you be at ease; may you be loved. Move on when ready. The hard one is the practice. Do not expect to feel anything in particular. Do it anyway.
Take whatever is troubling you. Draw two columns. Column A: what is in your control. Column B: what is not. Be ruthless and accurate. Most things in B will surprise you with their being in B. Then attend only to A. Epictetus' two-thousand-year-old technology still works because the human nervous system has not been updated since.
Spend a few minutes vividly imagining you have lost something you currently have: a loved one, a sense, a freedom. Don't dwell — just enough to feel its absence. Then return. The thing you have, you have more clearly. This is not morbid. This is the cure for taking what you have for granted, which is the most expensive habit a person can have.
Three questions, in order: What did I do badly today? What did I do well? What can I do better tomorrow? Marcus Aurelius did this every night. Be honest but not punitive. The mind responds better to a fair audit than to a hostile one.
Choose one quote that struck you. Write it on a small card. Carry it in your wallet for one week. Read it three times a day, ideally before transitions: morning to work, work to home, before sleep. By the end of the week it will live in you, available without the card. After a year you will have fifty-two of them, and you will have learned them not as facts but as friends.