What's left then? You need to practice this retreat into yourself often. Pull back to this small part of who you are. Above all, don't let yourself get scattered. Don't throw yourself into things with desperate intensity. Stay free. Look at everything as someone whose goal is virtue. As someone naturally kind and social. As a citizen. As someone who will die.
When you need to step back and think, keep two ideas close at hand. First, things themselves don't reach your soul. They stay outside, quiet and still. All the chaos and trouble comes from your own thoughts about them. Second, everything you see now will change very soon and be gone. Remember how many changes you've already watched in your lifetime. The world is nothing but change. Life is just opinion.
What remains then, but that thou often put in practice this kind of retiring of thyself, to this little part of thyself; and above all things, keep thyself from distraction, and intend not anything vehemently, but be free and consider all things, as a man whose proper object is Virtue, as a man whose true nature is to be kind and sociable, as a citizen, as a mortal creature. Among other things, which to consider, and look into thou must use to withdraw thyself, let those two be among the most obvious and at hand. One, that the things or objects themselves reach not unto the soul, but stand without still and quiet, and that it is from the opinion only which is within, that all the tumult and all the trouble doth proceed. The next, that all these things, which now thou seest, shall within a very little while be changed, and be no more: and ever call to mind, how many changes and alterations in the world thou thyself hast already been an eyewitness of in thy time. This world is mere change, and this life, opinion.