Three pillars for sovereignty: Agreements & Energy · 1st/2nd Attention · Emotional Control.
Three Pillars for Sovereignty
Sovereignty means you direct your energy, attention, and conduct—rather than handing them to algorithms,
obligations, or moods. These three pillars form a simple operating system you can practice every day.
🔗 Agreements & Energy
Every agreement is an energetic contract. Vague yes’s, open loops, and unspoken bargains slowly leak power.
The practice is to make agreements visible, renegotiate what’s unbalanced, and close what’s complete.
- See it: list your top 5 recurring requests; mark which are truly yours.
- Clean yes/no: short, explicit language (“Yes—by Friday, scope A.” / “No—outside my role.”).
- Reciprocity: name value given ↔ value received for ongoing exchanges.
- Release: a brief cord/closure ritual for obligations that no longer serve.
🎯 1st / 2nd Attention
1st attention is focused doing; 2nd attention is relaxed awareness. Training both makes you unhookable by
digital noise and social pressure.
- Design your day: 2× deep-work blocks (50–90 min), 2 message windows.
- Ambient audit: mute 80% of notifications, remove feeds from home screen, close idle tabs.
- Re-center: 4-4-6 breath and “name the next task” when scattered.
- Ritualize: tiny cue before focus; tiny closure after (wins → lesson → upgrade).
💠 Emotional Control (Stoic)
You can’t control events; you can control judgments and choices. Calm becomes a trained skill, not a mood.
- Dichotomy of Control: separate “mine” (judgment, choice, effort) from “not mine”.
- Premeditatio: pre-plan responses to likely triggers; choose conduct in advance.
- Evening review: 3 wins (incl. conduct), 1 lesson, 1 upgrade for tomorrow.
- Virtues in action: wisdom, courage, temperance, justice as daily checkpoints.
Agreements & Energy Exchange
Definition: Every yes/no is an energy contract. Unclear agreements leak power.
- Common leaks: implicit obligations, rescue roles, guilt-yeses, scope creep.
- Signals: simmering resentment, calendar overcrowd, delayed creative work.
- Metric: Weekly “agreements inventory” and resentment score (0–10).
Micro-exercise: Write one clean no + one renegotiation script. Practice aloud before a hard talk.
1st / 2nd Attention
Definition: 1st = focused presence; 2nd = ambient watchfulness. Both can be drained by digital noise.
- Leaks: feed loops, notification spikes, tab hoarding, context switching.
- Signals: micro-anxiety, task thrashing, shallow reading.
- Metric: Daily deep-work minutes and tab-count snapshot at noon.
Micro-exercise: 7-day “attention fast”: disable feeds, schedule 2 × 50-min deep blocks, log cravings without acting.
Emotional Control (Stoic)
Definition: Differentiate what’s in your control; choose your response; keep your center.
- Leaks: outrage scrolling, doom forecasts, people-pleasing panic.
- Signals: reactive messages, sleep disruption, somatic tension.
- Metric: 90-second pause completion rate; evening review (wins/lesson/upgrade).
Micro-exercise: The 90-second reset → pause, 4-4-6 breath × 6, label the emotion, choose one aligned action.
