Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have been a fitness nut all my life, yet last year a combination of a reaction prescription drugs and latent back problems landed me on crutches...two back surgeries, 9 months now of physical therapy and still walking on two canes. Half of each day is spent in physical t herapy, and no one knows whether nerve damage will recover. I have my own consulting business, and I have avoided face to face meetings for fear of the reaction of clients and competitors to my physical infirmities...loss of business, loss of income, loss of lifestyle, loss of image, on and on. It was all getting deep into my head. Last week I heard Barry Ritholz on Bloomberg interview Ryan Holiday and discuss this book, which I promptly purchased. It has helped immensely in a single week to refocus and avoid a total flame out. I read the Stoics in college and later, but they never "spoke to me" like they do now. It is fundamentally a philosophy of coping. I still hang on to Charles Spurgeon, but so much of that is about what comes later; I needed something to help me with today. Interestingly, in reading through it (and half a dozen others I purchased since then), I have pondered how much we have drifted from our Graeco-Western traditions. The Founding Fathers were steeped in this stuff, but somewhere along the way we have all become tethered to the whims of feelings, including other's feelings, and the Stoics had the solution to these thousands of years ago. I can't control those, and so I don't allocate my precious limited resources to them. So I work around them. Adapt. The Media in this country inundates us with such distraction (the topic of another book by this author, which I also bought). What would a Stoic say to someone who says they "don't feel safe?" Probably tell them to take action within their control to be safe and give up on demanding that the entire world respond out of guilt, badgering or whatever to appease your feelings. And then the Stoic would get on about his business. Its a great, and dangerous, little book. Thank you, Mr. Holiday, for bringing it back in an easily digestible format.