Stoicism began in Athens around 300 BCE with Zeno of Citium. It was not a self-help movement. It was a moral framework for navigating instability, power, injustice, and personal suffering.

At its core stand four virtues:

• Wisdom—practical judgment in complex situations

• Courage—moral and physical resilience

• Justice—duty toward others

• Temperance—restraint and moderation

Contrary to modern misunderstanding, Stoicism does not advocate emotional numbness. As contemporary scholar Pierre Hadot argued, it is a “way of life,” a disciplined practice of aligning thought and action with reason and virtue (Hadot, 1995). 

Psychologist Donald Robertson similarly frames Stoicism as a training system for emotional regulation and ethical leadership, not detachment from humanity (Robertson, 2019).

The argument today is simple: Stoicism is about not caring.

The counterargument, grounded in history, is stronger: Stoicism is about caring correctly—about what is within your control and accepting with dignity what is not.

In 1994, I attended a specialized war training school for special forces. At that stage, I had already spent more than three years in combat. I believed I knew enough. I believed I did not need anyone to teach me how to fight or survive.

That arrogance was corrected quickly.

The motto was simple:

Sweat Saves Blood.

Training was repetition. The same actions over and over again. Our training continued from the moment we woke up until the moment we went to sleep. And sometimes, even in the middle of the night, we were forced to demonstrate what we had learned.

It was not just muscle memory. It was full-body integration. Mind, breath, reflex, endurance—operating as one cohesive unit.

I did not enjoy pain. I wanted to quit. Many times.

But repetition did something remarkable:
My body adapted.
My mind followed.

Repetition does not make you perfect.
Repetition makes you permanent.

For those over 40, this principle is critical.

Repeat your workouts—especially when you do not feel like it.
Continue eating vegetables and fruits.
Repeat sleep discipline.
Repeat hydration.
Repeat mobility work. Repeat.

Consistency compounds.

Research in behavioural psychology confirms that habit formation is built on repetition under stable conditions. What you repeat becomes who you are. And when you repeat health, you build resilience against time itself.

Your discipline becomes a role model for others. Children observe. Friends observe. Even strangers observe.

Without preaching a word.

The Hardest Part Is to Start

I always found time for timewasters. Wrong crowds. Money lost. Emotional outbursts.
We spend endless hours scrolling through social media.

Social media can create havoc in your head. From the moment we open our eyes, we expose ourselves to global negativity—and an equal number of false gurus who claim they know what we should do with our lives.

I was sucked into that vortex too.

Fear. Comparison. Doubt.

But war taught me something fundamental:
Work on one problem at a time.

Sometimes, in combat, the only objective was to survive one more day. Not the week. Not the month. Just the day.

Starting is always uncomfortable. Particularly after the age of 40, society subtly implies that you should already possess a deep understanding of your identity.

We are products of our choices—but also products of conditioning. Parents. Teachers. Society. Labels.

Now, at 53, I deliberately challenge those old scripts.

Make a simple plan.
Repeat it daily.
Maintain intensity.
Keep your objective clear: your health is your most valuable commodity.

Yes, people may judge you.
Yes, some may laugh.
But ask yourself—how many times have you promised to start “next week”?

Waiting is not a strategy.

Over the past few days, I found myself watching a genre of content that, on the surface, I genuinely enjoy.

Individuals heading into nature.

They are actively participating in the construction of log cabins amidst the snow.
Working with their hands. They are making an effort to re-establish a connection with something that is older, simpler, and more grounded.

There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, there is something deeply human and admirable about it. Exploration, craftsmanship, self-reliance—these are not new ideas. They are ancestral.

But then a video appeared with a title along the lines of “Real camping encounters are so scary…”

Curiosity won, and I clicked.

What followed was not an adventure. It was exposure.

People are heading into unfamiliar territory with minimal preparation. There was no visible research conducted on the environment.

No contingency planning. There was a lack of clarity regarding issues such as mobile signal, weather volatility, evacuation options, and how to respond in case of an emergency.

Fear wasn’t treated as a warning sign.
It was treated as content.

And that is where the problem begins.

Intelligence work is often misunderstood. It is not primarily about force. It is about asymmetry.

The most effective leverage rarely involves threats. It involves possession. Images, audio, video, and context are captured once and remain usable indefinitely.

In documented historical cases uncovered through litigation and released court records, networks did not exploit compromising material immediately. They accumulated it patiently. 

The value was not in exposure but in optionality. They were able to influence behaviour years later, without the need for overt pressure.

This logic has not disappeared. It has become cheaper, faster, and easier to conceal.

I grew up in the largest workers’ suburb in Eastern Europe, under a grey communist system where aspiration was muted and conformity was rewarded.
I did not know there was another way to live.

What I knew was fighting.
What I knew was theft.
What I knew was how to survive and feel alive.

I was the child other parents warned their children about.
Don’t associate with him. He’s a loser.

By the standards of that time, I may have been considered a loser.

Everything shifted when my grandfather took me out of juvenile detention, placed his hand on my shoulder, and said something that would quietly shape the rest of my life:

“You have one chance. I love you. I will use everything I have to help you—but you must choose.”

He enrolled me in military school.
Not because it was easy—but because discipline is often the last refuge when chaos has ruled for too long.

A few years later, at eighteen, I entered the war.

I stayed behind to look after my grandparents because they believed in me. My grandparents supported my dreams, even when having them was considered dangerous. 

All I truly needed then was love — and someone willing to stand beside me when I had very little to offer in return.

Information has become a commodity with measurable strategic and economic value. Whether embodied in proprietary datasets, early-stage commercial concepts, policy deliberations, or informal assessments of people and organizations, its origins are invariably human.

Technology stores information: it does not generate insight.
Insight is produced, contextualized, and transmitted by individuals.

Social engineering, in intelligence and cybersecurity doctrine, refers to the deliberate use of psychological leverage—trust, affinity, authority, and reciprocity—to extract information without coercion or technical breach. In practice, it is not an attack on infrastructure but an exploitation of judgement.

In environments where the stakes are real, nothing meaningful begins with action. It begins with conversation. You talk things through. 

You test assumptions. You question plans. You listen. It’s not about achieving certainty, but about preventing misunderstandings.

Before any serious undertaking, alignment matters more than enthusiasm. Energy without direction burns quickly. 

Conversation is what gives movement purpose.

We talk about fear as if it’s something to eliminate.
We tell people to overcome it, defeat it, and silence it.

That’s not how it works.

In war, the most dangerous people weren’t the ones who admitted fear. They were the ones who claimed they didn’t feel it. They rushed. They missed signs. They made mistakes. Fear keeps you alert. It sharpens your attention. It reminds you that life is fragile and choices matter.

Boxing taught me the same lesson in a different way. You don’t step into the ring without fear. If you do, you’re either lying or reckless. Fear forces respect—for the opponent, for the process, and for yourself.

Fear isn’t weakness.
Ignoring it is.

When war broke out in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, I was still a child. Like many children in conflict zones, I did not understand geopolitics, ideology, or strategy. What I understood was absence.

My parents left.

There was no dramatic farewell, no explanation framed in adult logic. There was simply a void—emotional, physical, existential—at the precise moment when stability mattered most. 

In hindsight, I can rationalize their decision. War compresses morality. Fear reshapes priorities. Survival becomes the dominant lens through which all choices are made.

But for a child, betrayal does not require intent.
It requires broken trust.

That early fracture stayed with me. And when I later fought in the war between 1991 and 1995, it resurfaced in a different form—anger toward those who betrayed not just individuals, but a collective cause.

I remember how deeply we despised people who sold weapons, fuel, food, and medicine on the black market while ordinary civilians suffered. People who monetized fear. Who exploited chaos. Who thrived while others buried their dead.

That hatred shaped my choices.

It is one of the reasons I later chose to join state security services—not out of blind loyalty to institutions, but because I wanted to understand how betrayal works, who commits it, and why it repeats itself across every conflict, every regime, and every generation.

In intelligence and security work, we operate on a simple assumption:
Every conversation may be collected, recorded, or weaponized.

Yet in corporate life, that assumption is rarely made.

During the pandemic, I watched executives, managers, and professionals speak freely—often emotionally—without any risk assessment. Meetings were conducted as if privacy still existed by default. It doesn’t.

Smartphones turned everyone into a potential recorder. Platforms like Zoom became essential overnight, but few paused to ask what risks came with that convenience.

As Forbes reported during the pandemic, “Zoom” itself collects and shares significant data, but the larger risk lies with the host—who may have powers participants do not fully understand or control. 

Conversations with colleagues, clients, or even health professionals could be recorded, stored, or shared without immediate visibility.

Technology moved faster than awareness.
And awareness is always the first casualty.