5 Laws For An UNBREAKABLE MIND According To The Stoics.

One day in September of 1965, on a mission over North Vietnam, his plane was hit.

He had only a few seconds to eject, and as he drifted down by parachute into enemy territory, knowing he was about to be captured, he thought a sentence he would recall many years later: "I am leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus." That sentence is where everything begins because in that instant, he understood what he was about to lose: his rank, his aircraft, his freedom, his family, everything that made him feel like somebody, and he also understood the one thing nobody would be able to take from him.

The first law of an unbreakable mind is to separate, without excuses, what depends on you from what does not.

It is the opening line of The Enchiridion, the one Stockdale carried in his memory.

"Of things, some are up to us, and some are not.

Up to us are our judgments, our choices, our actions.

Not up to us are the body, reputation, power, and whatever others do to us." As he fell, Stockdale made that separation in seconds.

His body no longer depended on him.

Neither did his fate.

Neither did what they were going to do to him.

But one thing was still his: the way he would respond to all of it, and he decided that this part, the only part he had left, he would not hand over.

This is what almost nobody understands about strength.

It isn't about controlling everything.

It's about knowing exactly what is yours and putting everything you have into that without wasting a drop of energy on the rest.

And you, when everything hits you at once, where do you spend your strength? On what you can change or on turning over what you can't? Because a mind that fights everything ends up broken.

A mind that chooses its battle holds.

Make it concrete the next time you feel everything coming down on you.

Stop and name, one by one, the blows you are taking.

Then ask yourself about each one: What part of this is up to me? More often than not, you'll find that half of what is crushing you is out of your hands and that what is in your hands is much smaller and far more manageable than it seemed.

That discovery alone takes half the weight off.

The second law is knowing that your body can break, but your will cannot.

When Stockdale hit the ground, he landed in a small village.

They surrounded him, beat him, and in the struggle, they shattered a leg.

That leg was never the same again.

For the rest of his life, he would walk with a limp.