Stoicism for a Better Life – Weekly exercise (May 10, 2020)

Hello there, 

For this week’s exercise, I will look for inspiration from some simple and direct words from Epictetus’ Discourses II 2.12:

“For when you subject what is your own to externals, then from henceforth be a slave.”  

This is a fairly popular quote I have seen float around the internet under a….cosmetically uplifted variance:  There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will. Although this modified quote is wrongly worded and (worse) referenced to at least five historic figures that I saw online, the underlying message is the same as Epictetus’ original quote above (and yes I am aware many other philosophers echoed similar ideas, but today we focus on the slave turned Stoic only).

The message is short, simple and strikes at the heart of what the Stoics built their school of thought around: All we control is our own judgments and intentions for actions, and happiness can be reached by focusing on only those two things which are under our control.

Everything else in life, including your own body and its aches, the current economy, the political strife, what your coworkers said about you, the bad call that ref made during the game, that nincompoop that cut you off this morning, etc. is out of our control. This is hard for us to accept, but the universe has control over 99.99999999% of what we perceive to be “our lives”.

So whether you are a newcomer to this or a seasoned Prokopton, this week go back to the basics. At the end of the day, write down one (or more) thing you got upset over during the day, that you can look back and clearly recognize as being out of your control. Recall that trying to influence something (like getting to work on time) is not the same thing as controlling it (as in actually getting to work on time….because you could not have foreseen the unannounced congestion on the road and now you’re late). If you shed your worries about the things you don’t control, you will shed many of your anxieties.

As always I wish you a tranquil and productive week. Reach out to me on Twitter or Reddit to keep the conversation going.

Anderson Silver

(Author of “Your User’s Manual” and “Vol 2: Your Duality Within”)