Last week, the final exercise in the Discipline of Action, you questioned and examined your motives to act. In Stoic psychology, the urge to take action arises from assenting (that is, agreeing to) your first impressions about reality and what’s appropriate to do in any given situation. Impressions thus precede and are directly related to actions. This week’s exercise, your first in the Discipline of Assent, is to take one step back in this causal chain, focusing on the impressions that lead to both action and emotions.

Whenever you encounter a “harsh impression”—something that seems very desirable or very undesirable to you—pause, and say to yourself, “This is just my first impression; it may not be as it appears,” or something similar that resonates with you. This may sound familiar, since Epictetus described exactly how this should be done at the beginning of this chapter. Write down an implementation intention to help you remember this first step in catching your impressions. It should spell out how to recognize a harsh impression, and also contain a phrase that resonates with you, that you can say to yourself when encountering the impression.

After you catch the impression, ask yourself whether the object of your desire or aversion lies within your complete control or not. If not, then say to yourself that it’s nothing to you, or something similar (e.g., “my character’s more important than this,” “this isn’t really good/bad,” etc.). Write another implementation intention to help you remember how to apply the dichotomy of control to your impressions, and what to say to yourself if the impression you are considering is outside of your control.

That’s all you’ll be doing this week. As with many exercises you will practice in the Discipline of Assent, this is simple, but not easy! You may miss catching many of your initial harsh impressions at first. That’s fine. The goal is to improve over time with practice.

In order to work on your judgments, you must first realize what your judgments are. This week’s exercise will help you improve your ability to catch your implicit impressions and value judgments in action. The second step, in particular, will help you begin to correct your value judgments of externals at every moment.

You may notice that this exercise is quite similar to the first two exercises you did in Week 1 and Week 2. Just as then, this week you’ll be focusing only on what’s completely in your control. The difference here is that you will attempt to do so continuously throughout your day for every harsh impression that arises. This detailed focus on the dichotomy of control immediately after impressions arise can lead to significant progress over time, if consistently applied throughout your day.

How did focusing on catching and countering impressions work for you this week? Did you find that it became easier with time? If not, do you see any way to make the process easier with practice? How did countering your impressions affect your actions and mood? Take some time to write about your experience this week.

If you found this week’s exercise challenging, don’t sweat it. You’ll have another chance to work with impressions in next week’s exercise.