Stoic Joy: Six Habits For A Calmer Life

The first quote is from Epictetus.

Very simply, he says, some things are in our control and others are not.

This is really basic and people often say this to us when we're having a bad day is, oh, just focus on the things you can control or don't worry about that, it's not within your control.

It's one thing to say it and to kind of think it on the surface level, but the Stoics really embodied this fundamentally and they viewed all of life and all of thoughts into these two categories.

What can you control? What can't you control? What is up to you? What is not up to you? And they put all of their effort into the things that they could control.

The next quote from Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic philosopher emperor of Rome, he said something similar to Epictetus.

He said, you have power over your mind, not outside events.

Again, this is the same thing.

And the reason why it's so similar is because the Stoics essentially saw our judgments and our intentions and our thoughts are up to us, whereas pretty much everything else, like our body, our reputation, our wealth, our status, all of those things are not up to us.

So you're saying the same thing.

You have power over your own mind.

This is the thing that is up to you.

This is the thing you can control.

Now, the only way we're going to really start embodying the dichotomy of control is to turn it into a habit.

And the way that I like to teach this is the seven second stoic check.

So as you're going through life, and you can practice this today, you can practice it right now as I run you through it, something happens.

The first thing you do is you pause.

Okay, stop.

I feel emotion.

This is not going as I wanted it to go.

Stop what you're doing.

The next thing is put a label on it.

This is in my control.

This is not in my control.

Pro tip, most of the things will not be within your control.