The five rules to live by to master the dichotomy of control.
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.”
— Epictetus. Discourses. II.5
Where is your circle of control?
How wide is your strip of influence?
Why are you resisting the universe?
The more I think about it, the more I feel the struggle. For most of my life, I have been a frustrated man. For most of my life, I have been an angry man. Yet, I have been faking it with a smile for most of my life.
I have felt powerless in the face of everything I cannot control. Be it things that I wanted that slipped between my fingers. Be it things happening to loved ones that I wish would not happen or the opposite.
We all are facing that dichotomy in our world. There are things we can control, and the rest of the universe is outside our reach.
So we might think that there is a clear border between those universes. Yet it is more complex than that. It is like the…
