Hi fellows! I’d like to share with you a assignment from a stoic philosopher Epictetus that helped me to cope with my mental health issues, abbreviate anxiety, and make better decisions. I’ve framed it from his perspective, so he is a teacher here. Wish you a good speak!

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Hi, I am Epictetus. I was born a slave in the Roman Empire and was crippled later on in animation. This was terrible fortune and not of my own doing.

But neither the shackles of my enslavement nor the limits of my body constituted me feel restriction. This might seem very strange to you, but let me explain.

Some things are within our complete control, while others are not. Within our hold are judgment, longing, antipathy, and whatever is of our own doing.

Not within our complete control are our form, our asset, stature, and whatever is not of our own doing.

That’s because there are many external factors involved: illness, misinformation, and the effects of other beings on us.

However, judgments and libidoes are internal to us, as we learned in the previous lessons.

But how should we deal with things like our state or our stature? We can’t really stop helping about them, but we can’t guarantee that these things will turn out the way we want either.

We Stoics believe that we can’t certainly fail in those things, as long as we are doing everything possible within our ascendancy. If they still go wrong, like due to you having an unexpected illnes, it was not of your doing, so it’s not a failure.

Now, think of the last time you were afraid of disappointing, for example, public addres. How did “youre feeling”? How did it play out? Did you feel that you have complete control over developments in the situation?

We control far less than we might intially conceive, and we likely have corrected opinions about what the hell is control.

The problem is that by follow things that are not under control, we can’t certainly restraint our happiness.

Let me give you an example.

It is like planning a ocean voyage. What are you able do? You can choose the captain, the marines, the working day, the given moment. Then a tornado comes upon us. At this time, what are your concerns? Your part is done.

So choosing the captain was under your self-control, and weather conditions were not. So why would you even be vexed by the failure if “its not” under your complete control?

What can you do in situations like that? Shift your goals from the external to the internal: repeat yourself that your objective is not to have a safe voyage but to do the best that is within your strength to make it safe.

If you redirect your attention and hopes in this fashion, you can’t get disappointed that easily.

So let’s do a quick exercise.

Think of an important event you have soon. It might be a date or a public act. What is under your switch within this event? What is not?

Great. How can you focus more on things you verify and settle little attention to something you can’t?

We should focus our energy and resources on altering what we can control and turn away as much as possible from what we can’t.

This stews down to the notion that we are in charge only and exclusively of our deliberate senses, our endorsed minds and values, and our decisions to act or not to act.

Nothing else.

I highly recommend doing this exercise daily, looking at specific events in your life. As you continue practicing, you’ll internalize what is really under your complete control and what isn’t.

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P.S. If you liked military exercises, I have written more free instructions like that. Just in case you are curious to explore more: https :// alter-ego.app/ newsletter

The themes I cover are: getting penalized, abbreviating distres, learning about your life evaluates, decision-making, the skill of pleasure, and being present in the moment.

The exercises are based on the primary sources of gumption from more than 2500 years of history of logic: Plato, Aristotle, Lao Tzu, Carl Jung, Stoics, and many others.

to be provided by / u/ Sviat-Hni [ attach ] [ explains ]

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