What's in your control

Two thousand years ago a Greek teacher in Rome named Epictetus, who had been born without freedom and earned it, opened his handbook with one sentence that could save most people most of their suffering: some things are within our power, and some things are not. Our opinions, our choices, our responses are ours. Our bodies, our property, our reputation, other people, the weather, the past: not ours. The Stoics built a whole way of life on sorting correctly.

Modern Stoicism, taught by writers like Ryan Holiday and philosophers like Massimo Pigliucci through the 2010s, took that ancient practice and made it daily. Three practices in particular.

The dichotomy of control: before you spend energy on anything, ask whether it's up to you. If not, let it go. If so, go all in.

Negative visualization: spend a minute imagining losing something you have. Not to be morbid. Because the Stoics found that it's the fastest route to gratitude, and the best insurance against being shattered when loss comes, as it does.

And the obstacle as the way, from Marcus Aurelius: what stands in the path becomes the path. The thing blocking you is the training you needed.

It's in the month of Awareness because the dichotomy of control is a noticing practice before it's a philosophy. Most of our stress is spent on things in the second column. Noticing which column you're in, in the moment, is the whole skill. The Stoics were emperors and freedmen and merchants, and they all said the same thing: the column you're in determines whether you're free.

I'll add that Stoicism isn't about feeling nothing. Marcus wept. Seneca grieved. It's about not being ruled by what you can't rule.