I wrote about my newest notebook, my “Work in Progress” notebook here. It’s basically a notebook that I use for self improvement, dedicated for various exercises in focused meditation, working through gnarly personal issues, and for more intense personal journaling.

One of the things that I do as an ongoing exercise in this notebook is keep a list of people that I personally know (so no celebrities or influencers) and what I learned from them. The idea came to me as I was reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.

The book starts with a list of people that Marcus is indebted to – from his immediate family, then onwards to friends, teachers and advisers. This inspired me to create a similar list of my own, also starting from my immediate family and expanding onwards from that.

Some people are kind, inspiring, provide a good example and so they were easy to add to the list. Others were more challenging, but I forced myself to confront my relationship to them, and to find the valuable lessons that I learned from them. The point isn’t to be vicious, cynical, or facetious, but rather to take a second look at people and relationships that you have labelled in a certain way. So the terrible boss taught me what I value in myself and in my managers, certain mean people taught me how to recognise hypocrites, and bad teachers taught me to appreciate good ones and to learn on my own.

I highly recommend doing this exercise and returning to it. It will make you appreciate and feel grateful for the people in your life, and you may even be moved to thank a few of them, even though that’s not the point of this. The point is to realise that:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent, 

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were:

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

John Donne