Do You Know What Is Extremely Worthwhile?
What is important, what is not, and how to know the difference
With everything that happens and every choice to be made, the Stoics ask themselves one clear and basic question:
Is this inside of my control or outside of my control?
By teaching yourself to always make this distinction like a reflex, you set yourself up for mental clarity. To make this discrimination is to simplify your life.
The core idea of the Stoics
“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realise this and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius
The division to make is simple, based on one quality:
The reach of your control
There are three easy stages to follow as you go
- Make a clear distinction between the things you can change and all other things.
- Focus on what is inside your control.
- Stop wasting your efforts on the things you cannot control.
How to do this in your own life
To understand how we can use this in our daily lives, look at the following example:
When you have an important meeting with a presentation tomorrow, it is common to endlessly worry about it in advance.
You might feel stress, anxiety, or fear.
Reasons for this might be:
- You feel insecure about your presentation slides
- You always start sweating and talking too quickly, so that will probably happen as well this time
- You think you are going to fail getting your point across
- You want to be well received
The reason you feel anxious then, for example, is that you are trying to arrange something that lies outside of your control.
Take the lyre player: he’s relaxed when he performs alone, but put him in front of an audience, and it’s a different story, no matter how beautiful his voice or how well he plays the instrument. Why? Because he not only wants to perform well, he wants to be well received — and the latter lies outside his control. — Epictetus
To be well received is not up to you. Neither is getting your point across.
What lies inside of your control, however, is making sure you are well prepared. Having practised well, you have gained experience that gives you a better chance of success. Do what you can to be prepared, so that you can feel confident of being ready, and then let go. The rest is not up to you.
Making this distinction gives you power. Not doing so leaves you powerless.
Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside of our control, the less control we have. — Epictetus
- Trying to change things you have an influence on gives you the feeling that you are in control.
- Trying to change things you have no influence on makes you feel powerless.
- Letting go of the things you cannot control gives you mental peace.
Wanting things to be different while you have no power over them makes you feel stressed and anxious.
“We suffer more in our imagination than in reality.”
— Seneca
Focus only on what you can control and you will find strength.
Check out 5 of the best 1-minute Stoic reads as well.
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