I've broken a lot of rules I made for myself. Diets. A new habit that lasted a week. To me it's more than a missed day, because I think of myself as a man who keeps his word to himself, and a broken rule can look like evidence against that.

So I have one rule about the rules. I never miss twice in a row. I also remind myself that I am a reflection of my actions. Going back is an action too.

Say you're on a diet and you eat one cookie. The cookie is small. The thought after it is the trouble. "Well, that's that. Might as well eat ten."

Marcus addresses the discouragement that follows a lapse. Right before today's line, he tells himself not to get discouraged when he can't always live up to his principles. Then he says to go back to the effort.

He also doesn't ask for perfect. Be content, he says, if your conduct is generally such as becomes a man. I read "generally" as overall conduct, not permission to skip. One miss doesn't cancel the rest.

Take ten minutes today, before you need it.

Pick one rule you might break: the phone at dinner or the early walk.

Decide now what you'll do after a miss: the same thing, the same size, at the next chance. Mine is the rule above.

Then pick a sentence to say instead of "well, that's that." "Okay, back to it" is plenty.

If you keep missing, shrink the rule on a calm day, not in the middle of a bad one. If it's about eating or a medical treatment, talk to a clinician or dietitian rather than repeating it at the same size.

Benjamin Franklin tells in his Autobiography how he set out to become perfect. He listed thirteen virtues, then marked every fault with a black spot in a little book. After each thirteen-week course, he scraped the marks off and started again.

The virtue that gave him the most trouble? Order. Its rule was "Let all your things have their places." He made little progress and had "such frequent relapses" that he almost gave up and settled for a faulty character. He told of a man who asked a smith to grind a whole ax as bright as its edge. The man turned the wheel and took the ax as it was. In Franklin's telling, the man said, "I think I like a speckled ax best."

Franklin heard that voice too. Something "that pretended to be reason" kept suggesting his standard might be "a kind of foppery in morals." Obviously, Franklin never reached perfection but wrote that trying made him "a better and a happier man."

Marcus asks for that trying: return to the effort, and be content that your conduct is generally what it should be. Content is not the speckled ax. Marcus keeps going back; that man stopped.

Think of the last rule you broke. What was the first thing you told yourself afterward, and what did you do in the next hour?

Never miss twice,

Jon