Settle the day before you sleep

Grudges don't usually arrive whole. They accrue. A clipped reply Monday, a slight on Wednesday, a meeting Friday where you got talked over again, and by the weekend you've got a running tab against someone you have to see at 7 a.m. on the line. Nobody decided to build that. It just collected, one un-examined evening at a time.

The Stoics had a fix, and it's the practice for today. Seneca describes the nightly habit of his teacher Sextius, who lay down each night and asked his own mind: "What bad habit of yours have you cured to-day? what vice have you checked? in what respect are you better?" (Of Anger 3.36, Stewart). Seneca did it too — replayed the whole day before sleep, the things he'd said and done, and where he'd been small. Then he closed the book on it: I pardon you this time; don't do it again.

Do that with the day's grudges. Run back through who got under your skin and why. Some of it you'll see was nothing — a tone, a guess, a story you wrote. Some of it was real, and you can decide what it's worth carrying into tomorrow. Most of it, you'll find, isn't worth the storage.

The tab only compounds if you never check it.